Soul in the South

I’ve been forced to address my soul in these tree-covered hills, this region of NASCAR and Civil War ghosts . . . guitars, banjos, and fiddles saddled to the wind . . . mockingbird mornings . . . moonshine sunsets. Do I miss Chicago, with all its steel beams and fragmented forest? Car horn mornings? Cell phone sunsets? Where I was constantly jabbed in the sides by strip malls and cars breathing down cars' necks? The patchwork wildness seemed okay at the time because it was all I’d known. But now I live where it spreads out like a big whoosh against the horizon. So what’s more to say? The soul’s no longer jabbed. It can breathe.