Milledgeville Aubade 1831
By Sean Hill (’99-’01)

All night heavy moonlight dampened
echoes of the curfew bell that rang us in.

Nathaniel stole the little cool
from the late August night that touched my skin

like the silver I polish and my mistress’s
looking glass on first touch took the warmth of my

curious finger. I wake before Nate
to the rhythm of his breaths woven

with the lowing of cows from the commons.
He wakes and together we await

the rooster’s call. Our kin on country
plantations have already been moved by

horn, bell, or call to the fields. We part with
the first rays. I go to my master’s house

to tend my mistress, Nate to the stable
to groom his master’s dun gelding. Wet grass

under my feet whispers recalling the hay
stuffed mattress’s murmur. The mockingbird greets

the morning with many tongues. Pigs, escaped
from the commons, rouse to forage before

the marshal rounds them up today. Nate’s tin
badge shines on his homespun shirt in this early light

precious as silver, his freedom, his travel pass,
his way back to me.

Milledgeville Aubade 1831 from Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, copyright © Sean Hill. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.

A native of Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill earned an M.F.A. from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where he was awarded the 2003 Michener Fellowship for poetry. His other awards include the Academy of American Poets Prize, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference working scholarships in 2000 and 2001, an Individual Artist grant from the Region 2 Art Council of Minnesota in 2004, a 2005 Bush Artist Fellowship, and a 2006 Travel and Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals including Callaloo, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, lyric poetry review, DIAGRAM, and Pleiades; in the anthologies Blues Poems, Gathering Ground and The Ringing Ear; and have been nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize and selected as a "Discovery"/The Nation Prize semi-finalist in 2005 and 2006. His manuscript Blood Ties & Brown Liquor has been selected as a semi-finalist or finalist for several national publication prizes including The Walt Whitman Award. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he is Conference Administrator for the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference and 2006 – 2007 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

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