Photo: Beyond the fence, an open battlefield filled with longleaf pines in 1780e. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Old battlefields seem more like parks. Trying to imagine cannon and cries of the wounded? Difficult, but not always. Farmers’ plows unearthed so many Minié balls at Shiloh, the soil turnedContinue Reading
Photo: Old Photographs By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.” Cormac McCarthy’s words. Lord knows I’d like to forget some things, namely certain people I’ve known. Memory is a blessing and a curse but we areContinue Reading
Photo: Wilson’s Laundromat, The stories this place could tell. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net My first time home from college I took a bag of dirty laundry to Mom. She tossed it out the door. “You’re education has just begun. From now on wash your own clothes.” Thus didContinue Reading
No one hears the wind chimes. The parking lot stays empty. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I call it the Roll Call of The Waiting. Inactive churches in need of friends. Friendship, Dothan Methodist, St. Simon’s Episcopal Church, Halfway Creek, Workman Methodist, Graham’s Methodist . . . the rollContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net It’s a battle Britain claimed to have won, and yet it sent the Redcoats to Charleston and back to Britan ending their presence in the Carolina backcountry. I have visited six battlefields: Civil War battlefields Gettysburg and North Carolina’s Bentonville, Kettle Creek in GeorgiaContinue Reading
The white dorsal line means this is a female. No dewlap. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I called it a green lizard. I couldn’t pronounce Anolis carolinensis back then. Heck, I hadn’t even heard of the term. But now something catches me flatfooted — I’m told little girls woreContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I never had time for golf, but I love the Masters. I never miss the Sunday round on TV. It almost always provides high drama. I speak for a lot of Georgians in the Central Savannah River Area when I say we take greatContinue Reading
Photo: More beauty lives in an old country store than the newest McMansion. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Title my photo Struggle. Caption it: Dreams die along the back roads. First two sentences: Can’t even sit in a chair and look forward to better days. Stuck in reverse. AContinue Reading
Photo: Blue flag irises carpet Red Bluff Bain in blue come spring. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net The rains of late and spring’s approach set my mind on the Carolina bays, those coastal plain wetlands of mystery and life. The elliptical depressions are filling with water and the greatContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A lulu of a lady sold my parents a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. Miss Lulu Goolsby to be exact. It changed my life living in rural Georgia as I did. I read that set from A to Z at least three times.Continue Reading
From little acorns mighty oaks grow. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Though my hair was chestnut brown, I was green, a young writer hoping to create something memorable. I needed inspiration and I found it in a novel, Shining Tides. Winfield Brooks wrote it. The inside flap said theContinue Reading
The cursed door no longer seals the mausoleum By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A road down Edisto Island way will take you past green swamps and oaks dripping with Spanish moss and shanties with bright, sky-blue doors. Churches white as egg whites line the road. Hauntings live there. AsContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net He was charismatic and a lightning rod for trouble. He was a roadie for the Allman Brothers Band. What little I know of his life tells me one thing: his is a movie in the waiting. Twiggs Lyndon. Too bad he’s dead. In 1974Continue Reading
It makes for a good photo but it doesn’t take selfies. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net In rural Georgia the party line was our lot back in the early 1950s. When the phone rang, we counted. Our phone rang two times. Three for another and so forth. Today’s youngerContinue Reading
Pictured above is the author and James Dickey, June 24, 1995. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Each January, my thoughts turn to a fellow Georgian. James Dickey died January 19, 1997, of the same disease that took my mother’s life. On June 24, 1995, I interviewed Dickey for ReckonContinue Reading
Photo: Osprey at Anthony Shoals with a fish too big to lift. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Three birds hold me in their thrall. The osprey, whippoorwill, and oft-slighted buzzard. I love the whippoorwill’s lilting call. The noble osprey and its distinctive M-shaped wings stands out, and the utilitarianContinue Reading