When I was eight years old my parents split And my sister and I went to stay with our mothers Uncle Johnny and his wife Lizzie the precious Their farmhouse sat in the middle of a cornfield. There was a dirt road leading into the house's small Front yard, and a smaller backyard area with a large barn. Corn grew on three sides right up to the bare areas of yard. Those fields became my sanctuaries my place of escape From all the things I wanted to forget and I did forget. With the sweet corn gone except for the dried stalks Of summer's passing, I walked between the broken Rows lost in imagination the rich gray-black loam Soft beneath my young feet, ground cold from winter's harvest Sowing in the unchanging dirt of Carolina planting dream seed