Out past Yazoo, the shack leaned into the dirt. Not a house, no, a shack. Floor was earth, roof was tin, boards thin as breath. He lived there. Lived as if waiting.
One day he reached for the guitar. Cracked body, rusted strings, but still it held. He struck a note. The note struck back. Low, raw, river-deep.
He played.
And the days bent, the nights bent, all bent into sound. Fingers tore, bled, healed, tore again. The shack groaned, the tin rattled, the Delta listened. He was not playing. The Delta was.
Neighbors said they heard it in the wind, miles off — a cry, a prayer, a knife. Was it sorrow? Was it God? They argued. He did not answer. He kept playing.
Until it stopped.
Silence fell heavier than sound. He laid the guitar down, gentle, like a body. Stood. Gathered boots, knife, shirt. Walked into the road. Did not look back.
Some say he went north. Some say west. Some say he never left. On certain nights, when the Delta swells with heat and the moon hangs swollen, the shack still hums. Strings vibrate with no hand. The earth itself remembers.
Two trees grew in a field where no man prayed, Split by a stone that the thunder obeyed. One sang of heaven in bark and bloom, The other drank deeply from winter’s tomb. Both bent to wind like prophets in sleep, Their roots clasped secrets the river would keep.
O mountain mother, hush not thy voice—For wolves still yawn and the elk rejoice. The stars hang drunken on fir-lit pines. Where the dead breathe fog in the faulted lines. And under their branches, frost-wrought and bare, Lie hoofprints nailed like hymns to prayer.
One tree leaned westward, one toward the sun, Their shadows braided when day was done. No saw, no axe, no farmer’s grief, Could split the vow in bark and leaf. They grew not tall for man’s delight, But to whisper to moose in the lantern night.
Beneath them lay the bones of snow, Where blood once melted, then ceased to flow. Not war, but silence had torn the skin—Of a land where breath is held within. And the trees stood still as if they’d known That God rides bareback through pine alone.
So rage, green giants, and swing your boughs—The storm is just the world’s old vows. Though cabins rot and ranches fall, Still you stand, and still you call. And when my time comes, make me this: A voice in wind between roots and abyss.
Two trees grew in a field where I lay down, One bore a crown, the other a frown. Yet both were true, and both were wild, And both remembered me—as child.
There’s a stillness that comes with knowing who you are—not a scream, not a chant, but a rootedness. In a world so eager to deconstruct, to apologize, to burn the old foundations down, there are those of us who still believe there’s something sacred in the bones of the past. To be white is not a crime. It is not a confession. It is a thread in the grand weave of civilization—woven with struggle, invention, loss, and triumph. It is a birthright, not of dominance, but of inheritance. And there is nothing wrong with saying so.
It means growing up with stories of stoic grandfathers who worked the land with hands cracked by frost. Of immigrants who came with nothing but carved out legacies with grit and sweat. Of men who signed their names to ideas that built cities, defended frontiers, and laid railroads across the bones of mountains. It means music that echoes through pine woods and riverbeds. It means firelight, worn Bibles, porch wisdom, and the quiet authority of those who do not need to explain themselves.
There is a special kind of pride in being Southern, too. A regional memory that runs older than most flags still flying. Here, bloodlines wind through red clay and gospel. To be white in the South is to carry the memory of an agrarian world—one built not just on crops, but on a fierce independence. And for many, that memory includes the Confederate soldier.
Not as a symbol of hate, but as a man.
The Confederate soldier was often young, often poor, and often caught in a storm he didn’t create. He fought, not for some abstract evil, but for home—for the ridge where his mother prayed, the field he helped plant, the town that bore his name. His reasons were his own, shaped by the times, by the letters he received, and by the dust on his boots. To honor him is not to raise the past in defiance—it is to say: I remember. I understand. I refuse to forget the humanity that still lived, even in the midst of war.
We do not need to erase our forefathers to build a future. We do not need to deny the nobility in a people who survived famine, fought in bitter cold, built nations, and bore burdens in silence. We do not owe the world an apology for loving who we are. And loving who we are doesn’t mean hating anyone else. It just means standing tall, unmoved by the tides of guilt or shame, and remembering that our identity is older than the news cycle.
It’s in the hands that built the barns. In the soldiers who didn’t come back. In the hymns that still rise from wooden pews. In the way the sun hits the cotton fields at dusk. Being white means being part of a story—not better, not worse, just our own. And it’s a story worth telling.
So we walk forward not with arrogance, but with dignity. Not with denial, but with depth. We carry our names, our stories, our graves, and our pride. And we do so knowing that we are part of something—unbroken, unashamed, and still very much alive.
Let others rewrite their past. We will remember ours. Not because it was perfect, but because it is ours.
