Now They Call It Parrot, But

My memaw was born in a community named Letterbox,
because, for a time (the US Post Office hadn’t yet opened),
the residents took their mail from wood or tin letterboxes
they’d nailed to the trees. There was a Letterbox School. 
My memaw, for a time, learned her letters there. 
Still is a Letterbox Church. 
In our neck of the Rockcastle, community names morph.

Eventually, my memaw married a boy from Ionia 
(or was it Holt? or Mount Pleasant?), and then they left,
briefly, to Pensacola, where, before home called them back,
they walked the tumultuous beaches of the Gulf, 
beaches whose names are unknown to me.