<div><I>In the Night Orchard</I> is a retrospective collection of poems gleaned from over three decades of writing by a poet absorbed by nature and culture in the American South. These often-narrative poems are concerned with history, race, indigenous music, the many Southern dialects and customs and the quest for authentic identity. <BR><br> <B>Skull, Grim, and Grinning</B><BR><br> I forgot how barbed wire snarls?<BR> like a low bird’s nest?caught<BR> the cold raccoon last winter.<BR> He found his own death there,<BR> and each snagged stage of ice,<BR> sun and hungry birds had a say<BR> as weeds blew and I found<BR> human obligations to occupy me.<BR> But after thaw I went walking,<BR> saw a twisted root (spring’s<BR> first threat of snake), red eye-<BR> shape of new sumac leaves,<BR> deer tracks by the hundred,<BR> and on the rotted fence post<BR> polished to blinding shine by sun,<BR> the forgotten relic hung,<BR> a barbed cocoon coiled around<BR> a fanged white flower of bone.</div>