The Green Hills...... in Memory of my brother

   going to the farm.....

The Green Hills

The green, green hills of Tennessee

Were tall and full of glory

As they always were and ever will be

To a barefoot child who ran there.

The skies were bright blue,

Filled with clouds of white cotton

Floating along lazily in the azure expanse,

In the wrath of a gold, blazing sun.

It was an involuntary journey,

Going back into the past

That had molded and made me

Who I was, who I am.

I didn’t want to be there, like that

A stranger, a visitor coming home from the world

One that had run from those wild, wandering hills

As fast as my young legs could take me.

I didn’t know what to do, where to look

I didn’t know how to feel, how to act

It was as if I walked in a long dreamless dream

Where everything was familiar but foreign.

There was family there

Some that I barely knew,

People who wanted to know and love me

But really, had no idea how.

It was strange

And beyond strange

In that pastoral setting

Such a postcard of a place that never quite was.

It was where I learned about life

And how not to live it

Where I learned how to die

And how to avoid it.

My hometown,

A scene that seems never to change,

Those hills rising high in the mists of the morning

Like castles in a little girl’s mind.

It was there I created a world

That would never be mine

Lying in meadows, fishing in creeks,

Praying into blue skies with my eyes full of tears.

Looking for answers

To a heart full of questions

Wondering how, why and when that the answers would come

Listening for whispers that I’d never hear.

That beautiful place

Was my prison, my dungeon

Jailed in that Eden by the need to control,

The need to suppress and the need to possess.

I was my father’s daughter

But he was hardly "my Daddy"

Just the despot of paradise

And a cloud blocking the sun.

Now,

He still lives where the hills make a hollow

Crippled and bitter, with a heart slowly dying,

Failing from disuse, still congested with scorn.

We buried my brother beneath that green earth,

Buried someone so gentle

And someone who was good

In the place of a man who could never show love.

There was a peace there

In the arms of the forests

It crept in with the terror

And the fear of the unknown.

It tried to comfort me, tried to hold me

But I couldn’t see it through my tears

Now, maybe I can feel it’s touch

Now that I’m far away.

I laid my brother’s funeral rose

Against my mother’s tombstone

Her sisters sang, (the two that’s left)

Old hymns from yesterday.

It was surreal, like life and death

And sadly bittersweet

Like a photograph you have to take

But you never want to see.

What is it about going home

That makes you feel so old?

Makes you remember your every thought

And relive your every dream?

There were some mysteries solved

But I left with different questions

So many scars were opened up

That I thought had long been healed.

How can ugliness live in a place of such beauty?

Innocence die, in the face of disdain?

I do not understand, Lord, I do not understand!

Shouldn’t there be answers now, shouldn’t there be love?

I feel like such a child again

A new-born child sent back in time

To the place that formed this wounded woman,

Birthed poems of joy and dark despair.

I don’t know how to write of this

Mere words somehow cannot convey

The pictures painted on my mind,

The flood that’s raging through my soul.

Those green, green hills of Tennessee

My hell, my heaven, my childhood home

Faded now with sunset in the rear view mirror

And I’ve never felt so all alone.

©By Voo Shining Stone

August 28, 2011

the occasion of my

brother Mike's death