Poem by Poet Laureate Linda Parsons

THE HISSING OF KNOXVILLE LAWNS

We are talking of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that
I lived there, so successfully disguised to myself as a child.
—James Agee, A Death in the Family

Off Broadway, north of the city, I carry 
jugs to my assigned neighborhood tree, 
the wine-colored chokeberry. Hobbled 
in 93 degrees, I breathe in the cool sewer, 
its rush to First Creek, then the Forks 

coil to form the Tennessee. I left my mother’s 
people in the Nashville Basin for Knoxville 
at eleven, straddled the Plateau, surged 
like the muddy Cumberland to get here 
and root. I wait till dusk to water 

my own trees—redbud, dogwood, 
paperbark maple—uncoil the hose 
like James Agee’s father on Highland Avenue, 
a little bit mixed sort of block, 
all the fathers out on their summer lawns, 

collars removed and necks shy, 
the bright bell of spray a call and response 
to cicadas’ risen whine. Like my own father, 
using the old name hose pipe, rinsing 
the road off the Buick, home from traveling 

the Southeast, his satchel and pamphlets 
unpacked. We don’t think of these moments—
how I sat snug as the car warmed up, 
as he scraped the winter ice, how the hose 
rang in his hands those dusty days—

until we stand in that very spot 
and open the spigot, until the arc 
of water is pure rainbow, peach
to indigo, and we are carried back
and back to our selves undisguised.

- Linda Parsons, Knoxville Poet Laureate, 2025-2027