Confessions of a Southern Gentleman

This is what you don’t understand.
I was raised to be a gentleman,
to open doors,
to speak with a soft measured voice,

to be kind, even to those
who have earned something louder,
something meaner and more prone
to walking away in the night.

Ingrained as a child
by a grandfather and great aunt,
remnants of the Victorian Age,
it became for me the measure of manhood,

a false standard of movies
And novels with forgettable titles,
that somehow, ivylike,
covered me like a cancer, real

and yet, not real,
because inside the kettle boiled.
passion, fear, anger,
all in equal measure,

a seething stew
held in place by this childhood varnish
that at times buckled in the sun
of love and betrayal,

watching every quiet truth,
vulnerable, soft spoken, and real,
ignored, set aside by those
on the outside, who chose

to ignore the honesty,
and to believe instead
the brittle veneer
of myth and legend.

About this poem

A business colleague accused me being a Southern Gentleman just yesterday, and the phrase rattled in my head all night. We all know what the result is when that happens: A poem.

The picture is of Belle Grove Plantation at Port Conway, the birthplace of James Madison, and about to open as a classic Bed and Breakfast.

Tom