SECTION II, REGIONAL AIRPORT

The poems in this section are set in two places. The first is my childhood town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home to scientists from across the U.S. and Europe, along with engineers, attorneys, government officials, and others who formed the Manhattan Project and its post-war research labs. This was a new, hastily built town — cosmopolitan, sciency, and focused on the future. And secondly, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, home to storytelling relatives who were school teachers, farmers, lawyers, writers, musicians, deacons, journalists, and postmasters. Theirs was a world of abiding connection to place, family, history, learning, and nature. They also followed the imperatives of their faith, and, like the modernists in Oak Ridge, found ways to help advance civil rights, at a time when that was not the norm in their region. These poems are written in gratitude for both childhood worlds.

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