I have been to Florida's highest elevation,
in Lakewood, 345', I have dived on its reefs,
in the keys, once, when there was an earthquake
in Alaska, Wakulla Springs turned milk white
before the seismographs started registering.
More men have walked on the moon than have
gone down in that cavern, but I knew one.
He had to tow an air compressor behind his truck
to fill his scuba tanks. Art Pinder speared a sailfish
with a face mask and a Hawaiian sling.

I ate at the Country Folks Buffet,
in Florala. I parked across from
a folk art gallery owned by Woodie Long

with a mural on the wall.
I thought of Gully Jimpson.
In fact, two murals.
Mule and crows and farmer
(Support Your Chamber of Commerce)
or children flying kites with tails and trees.

What-no bicycles, skyscrapers, taxicabs.
Pickaninnies jumping on the bed. Cottonpickers.
You know you're in a Sahara of the Bozart
when none of the local public radio stations
plays the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday.

Savage said one of his first memories of his father
was riding around dirt roads in a pickup truck,
his father drinking vodka and Donald Duck orange juice.
He would sing Jimmie Rodgers songs. Songs like
"Waiting for a Train." We all sang it, avec blue yodel.
I find that, if I sing loud, I can carry a tune. Indeed,
I knew the words. "Get off, get off, you railroad bum,
he slammed the box caddo." What's a box caddo?
A boxcar door.

One time Marty Raybon's bus
was pulling out of a bluegrass festival
and he stuck his head out of the window
and sang, "Take your shoes off, Walter,
you're walking on Potter Brown," a play on
Walter Moore, Moses, and Holy Ground."
The pickers around the campfire laughed.
The senior citizens in their Winnebago motorhomes
were inside, in the air-conditioning, watching golf
on television.

Woodie Long says he's going to come back
as a lesbian. That way he can still have women,
but he'll also get to use the ladies tee. Old golfers
never die, they just lose their inhibitions.

Walter Moore and Judith picked and sang,
Nicky and Sparrow Matthews, Woodie on banjer,

Dot with her back to the camera. Suzette off to the side,
me, Pretty Michelle. It was just like Laurel Hill,
only without Bubba walking in the fire, or Uncle David
stepping in someone's guitar case. Joe Bell is dead.
He liked to fish, he liked to drink, he liked to cook and eat,
tell stories, and listen to acoustic string-band music.

Margo Russell sketched and painted
the musicians as they picked and sang.

I wrote poems in my head, transcribed them later
in a composition tablet. I had to leave, from overstimulation.
Each memory set off scores of others.