I only thought it was hoping to be that

poor country boys from Dixie never moved

away from home,

always make their camp fires in good sight

of Mother and father, and the woman they married

in the middle of Daytona Speedway,

they professed with much passion that beyond

the Mason-Dixon line the world was flat,

and those who dare leave would be eaten up

by the Catholic Irish who came down on Groundhog Day

to murder the less educated protestant boys,

who, despite being highly prized athletes

their stardom faded upon graduation from secondary sports

camps,

yet, when I moved up north, I found a similar pattern

of movement among the Irish and Italian boys

called to ride ambulances in the bitterest

of a cold

winter's night,

they did not much want to leave the Jersey Shore,

afraid that the Pope's long coattails only extended

itself as far south as Baltimore maybe,

Lonely man cry for water and there is none,

illusions persist despite secular protestations

to the contrary

sour children run naked in the streets carrying

no cries for the only, of those homeless parents left behind

the illusion with the missing blanket of comfort that

all is well with their tinker toys and U-2 pilots,

is it the universal ulcer of hope,

or does truth live?