I like my cracklin’ cornbread
eaten with a pot of pinto beans,
and a pan of salt pork cooked with
collard, poke, and turnip greens.
I like my chicken fried in butter,
served with mash sweet potatoes too,
a baked white onion pie and
slow cooked Brunswick venison stew.
I like my Mallard duck roasted
stuffed with Arkansas wild rice,
for dessert a steamed bread pudding
and orange sauce is mighty nice.
I like to pick my peaches
off my granny’s lone peach tree,
put them in a brown sugar cobbler
and have a pitcher of sun brewed iced tea.
I like to pick yellow sweet corn,
and eat it raw right off the stalk,
have dinner with friends and kinfolk,
and long summer evening porch talk.
I like my smoked bacon sliced thick,
in its grease my eggs turned over easy,
or scrambled with last falls souse,
that is if it won’t make you queasy.
I like catfish cooked in cornmeal
with coleslaw, pickles and bread,
a moon pie and an RC cola,
a shady place to nap after I’m fed.
I like….no, I love cayenne peppers,
eaten every meal fresh off the vine,
or orange habeneros and serranos,
pickled in vinegar, saltwater and wine.
I like a bowl of wilted lettuce,
fried pork chops and blackeyed peas,
a pan of milk gravy and biscuits
dipped in the syrup of wild honey bees.
I like my thick buttermilk to have
golden flakes floating on its top,
and mom’s toasted molasses bran bread
with redeye gravy in the skillet to sop.
I like my coffee brewed black and strong
in our 100 year old percolator pot,
Aunt Mabel’s cinnamon buns from the oven,
when they are still steamy and hot.
I like each year’s bounty of our fields,
a true pleasure for anyone’s mouth,
but most of all I like the way we live, love,
work, play, and eat, in the good Old American South.
Now, y’all come for dinner, ya hear?
Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour
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Donald Harbour Poetry 