Spirit of the Trailer Park

I was workin' for the county When I saw her standing there With a ribcage like a washboard And with briars in her hair Alabama is a furnace And the summer is a dog She was naked in the creek bed In the image of her god On the Dia de los Muertos, I was sitting in a bar With tequila as my mistress, When my thoughts all turned to dark So I gave up heavy drinking And stitched up my broken mouth And I felt that old conviction, So I started driving south In the clay of Mason-Dixon, In the absence of all snow Where the button buck is rutting For the white tail of the doe She is toddling in the tall grass, Just as timeless as the trees Just as grungy as Seattle, Just as holy as a priest I was climbin' up to Babel, She was tugging at my jeans Said, "You can't ever get to heaven If you don't know what heaven means!" "It's not peeling like a paint job, It's not brushed under the rug No, it's much deeper beneath the floorboards, In these trenches that we've dug." With a prismatic halo And emaciated legs She took all my constitution And faded back into the dregs And as the sun set on the trailers Of my past and future lives The magnolias are pregnant! The cicadas harmonize!