Easily happy or happily easy?

I was thinking like I do sometimes. Like I do when the Adirondack chair is pulled up tight under the tangerine tree, while the sweet smell of the delicate white blossoms wafts in and out, in and out, coaxing forth memories of my sun soaked youth. Questions tug at the sleeves of my thoughts, wonderings of great and not so great import, each waiting its lazy turn to bask in the briefest of ponderment before flitting nervously off. Am I happy because I’m easy? Am I easy because I’m happy? Yes. I think I am.

In the soft recess of the sultry semi-shade I am a true southern son. I know the heat as an old, dear friend. It’s the kind of friend that you may sometimes discount, but whom you ignore at your peril. A friend who’s hot, heavy, humid breath on your arms, in your hair, and certainly in the small of your back, slips and slides, winking with an easy smile and thinly veiled menace.

Yes, I am a southern son. Magnolias welcome me home as surely as the Spanish Moss could not possibly be more indifferent to my comings and goings. Salt marshes give way to brackish creeks that wander off into the cool, comfortable shade of knobby kneed cypress trees. The sun kills that which cannot shake his burning stare, but, benevolently, grows in a tall and graceful beauty that what it could not kill. I am a southern son. I understand beauty hides a dangerous bent.

Take me somewhere trouble don't go. Make me someone trouble don't know, out

Ramblin' Ed