Family Gathering
by John Davis Jr.
dedicated to all my country cousins
In those Thanksgiving woods we were grateful
by nature, we were farm kids – mud-made
battle plans detailed our attack:
Mounting our gallant oak-limb steed,
we hurled barrages of pine-cone grenades
followed by Sabal Palm frond spears,
then went hand-to-hand with sword sticks
in the friendly fire of safe conflict.
Wounded, the unnamed invisible invaders
cowardly crossed the creek, high-tailed
into town, where all of our dangers went
to regroup and plot their revenge against
us, the adults of tomorrow.
John Davis Jr. is a sixth-generation Florida Cracker Poet. He lives in Winter Haven and serves as the English Department Chair for The Vanguard School of Lake Wales. His works have been published in the Santa Fe Review, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Cantilevers, Frigg Magazine, The Swamp and others, and he is also the winner of the Wesley Ryals Award in Creative Writing for Poetry from Florida Southern College. “Family Gathering” was first published in The Majorie Kinnan Rawlings Literary Journal at the University of Central Florida.
Other poems by this author:
