Elegy for the Southern Drawl

It is all dying out now in a voice asking,
“Where you from? How ya’ll folks doing?”
On the blank verse of the forklift man,
From way off down there and yonder,
Is draining, thou and thine, from prayers
Of spinsters in the Nazarene Church—
Is dying of knowledge of the world,
But still going barely, in a grunted “hidey”
In the line at the cash register at Shoney’s,
A father telling how he came north
To visit his son, impatience starting up
Its coughs behind him, his yes’ms and no’ms
An impediment here, Confederate money.
Kid’s in my office, slow-talking. I ask,
“Where you from?” He doesn’t seem to want
To say, thinks again, then does. “All over.”