Going Back

In my mind, I go back to my life's early track,
before destiny delivered so much of fate's chicane,
when innocence prevailed and faith not yet impaled
by the consequence of Satan's disastrous bane,
before I had been lured to his profane domain,
caught up in that evil seine.

'Twas in early September, I distinctly remember
bidding parents fond adieu and climbing aboard the plane
to gain a bit of knowledge at that distant college.
Red dirt roads sprawled across the land like a varicose vein,
and white cotton blanket over Alabama plain
stoked the embers in my brain.

The challenge had begun for this Yankee's son.
That thirst for knowledge kept tap-tapping at my brain,
but distractions appeared in ways which seemed so weird.
When I flunked a midterm exam, I felt the strain.
Fraught with fear of failure, I held on and tried to maintain
whatever leverage I could gain.

The hinge of moment swings from then to now and brings
a sense of victory that will always sustain.
I shed so many tears and fought through all those fears
over the reefs and shoals of that education campaign,
until a solid core of basic values remains
to prove the fight was not in vain.

   

24 lines written in the manner of The Raven   by Edgar Allan Poe