Alex J Stokas

Delta Dreams Alex J Stokas

A few years ago, after the great flood of 2011, I went on a four day tour of the Mississippi Delta accompanied by a good friend whom I will refer to as P. A. We left Memphis early one morning and headed down Highway 61 on our way to Greenville. As we traveled down 61, I recalled many years ago passing through this area and it had not changed. P. A. was my guide pointing out that Mississippi is a special place and much maligned by others. The hot sun, unpainted buildings, scattered shacks, small towns half empty, miles of cultivated fields, blues echoing in small towns, friendliest people on the planet, the arts, Oxford and Ole Miss, Blues venues like the Shack-Up Inn, and Ground Zero, and the unspoken sadness from a brutal past, all contributed to the poems in this brief collection. Some are from personal experience, or a response to life in the Delta, others from what I learned from P. A. It is my hope as you read each poem you will see the Delta with all its beauty, all its faults, and I hope someday experience its culture first hand before time brings change and the Delta fades into memory.