Ode to Kentucky

My home.

Paul Sawyier (1865-1917), Kentucky Landscape,  c. 1900 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If you happen to get off the interstate
and go behind the urban curtain,
you’ll find that the Bluegrass is much
more than race horses and bourbon.

Down one road there’s
a hollowed out farm house
that the locals whisper about
but never speak of aloud.

Down the next there’s a sleepy
town with a boarded up school,
and a main-street that folks
say used to be full.

If you go a bit further you’ll see
a church named “Friendship,”
with little old ladies who
gather in the church hall to gossip.

Sometimes you’ll come across
a closed down mine and people
talking about the jobs they lost
and what life used to be like.

When you go down those backroads
you can be assured that
you won’t see the state they
put on the back of the brochures.

But it's beautiful, too.

There’s mountains in the east
that seem as old as time,
with poor folks livin’ there singin'
songs you won’t elsewhere find.

There’s great forests and caves,
and men and women whose
smiles and good manners
go with em’ to their graves.

It’s a place composed of
pioneers and soldiers and slaves,
of people who love each other
and proclaim that only Jesus saves.

This land is more than its scenery,
and more than its sources of revenue.
It’s people and stories and
traditions that we ought to continue.

I know Kentucky may not be heaven
but I'd say it's pretty darn close;
for it'll always be my home
and the place I love the most.*

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I hope you enjoyed this poem. This is easily the most important one I’ve written, as it is both the longest and also deeply personal to me. I tried to put my heart and soul into this one, and I hope that you can feel that. I really do love my home state of Kentucky and I always will. This poetry is written by an amateur and that will likely show, but as long as you find something beautiful in it I will have accomplished my goal.

* Edit: In the original version of this poem, the last stanza read:

”A lotta people wanna leave,
but I wanna stay.
My home may not be perfect,
but Lord don’t I love it anyway.”

After some feedback, I rewrote it to be what you see now. Hopefully it is an improvement.

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