Deep Southern Summer Written at Midnight

Remember.

This is a fought-for land

There’s blood soaked in the soil.

There’s tears within its waves

And wails upon the shore

Its tempests veil the shrieks

Still heard from years of yore.

There’s terror in its shades

Dark places in its woods recall

Much pain unthinkable.

The pain must still remain

It cannot sublimate so soon.

The prayers of victims stay.

They do not die away.

Remember.

This is a fought-for land.

There’s blood soaked in the soil.

There’s terror in its shades

Heart-breaks unthinkable.

James Everett Kibler

James Everett Kibler is a novelist, poet, and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he taught popular courses in Southern literature, examining such figures as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Wendell Berry, and Larry Brown. Born and raised in upcountry South Carolina, Kibler spends much of his spare time tending to the renovation of an 1804 plantation home and the reforestation of the surrounding acreage. This home served as the subject of his first book, Our Fathers’ Fields: A Southern Story, for which he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction in 1999 and the Southern Heritage Society’s Award for Literary Achievement.