Miss Tennessee

Piano Man Women; Miss Tennessee

“It’s four o’clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in….” It is 4a.m., it’s dark outside and the regular crowd shuffling in is me.   We are at Fair Haven; it’s us, the mountain, the trees, and Miss Tennessee—“who we’ve been coming to see…” I love my Tennessee River, she’s never voted for anyone, she’s not liberal or conservative, she doesn’t watch CNN or Fox, she doesn’t send pipe bombs, call others racists, build walls, kill unborn children, slander good men, create refugees, block freedom—she just is.  She is older than Tennessee, older than America, older than China, North Korea, Syria, Egypt, Babylon, and Ur.  She’s been around, and now she’s wrapped around me.  A few feet in front of me, slowly, quietly, gently, she’s awake in the dark in my front yard.  I can’t see her but I feel her, I know she’s there waiting on dawn just like me because—it’s her I’ve “been coming to see to forget about life for a while.”