Woodsmoke. Wayne Caldwell
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Owenbys and O’Kellys and Greens, proud and stubborn as Germans and Irish
And Welshmen and Scots coiled like a clutch of winter snakes would be.
Baptists and Methodists and Lutherans and Catholics and Jews and I don’t know
What all else. Back yonder some of them helped runaway slaves
And draft dodgers jump the hollers for Tennessee and the road north.
Not long after the war, Jephthah Miller named a boy Ulysses S.,
Which takes a lot of sand, or a chip on your shoulder, one.
Old Jephthah wore out a stout Morgan girl, sired eleven young’uns with her.
His second wife’s Papa was Humphrey Posey Owenby,
Born when lots of boys got named after that old Baptist.
Reckon my mother thought reviving it would give me good luck.
Anyhow, South Hominy’s pretty country, settled by rugged people
Who didn’t care a hang for any kind of gummint.
Just wanted to be left alone at the mill or farm or store
In the shadow of the mountain my father said was mother to us all.
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The mountain’s all changed now. Got sold, for one thing,
To the Forest Service, then the Parkway sliced across like a wounded snake.
They tore down Buck Spring Lodge about that time, too.
They must’ve thought Yankee tourists would haul it off
Board by board, rock by rock, and they may have been right.
They put a dern TV tower smack on top in ’54,
Sticking up there blinking red of a night like a whorehouse sign
Just so we could watch Mister Bill’s Magic Bus.
Between bad air in the fifties and sixties and them confounded bugs
You got to look hard for balsam or spruce pine now,
And there’s days you can’t hardly see Cold Mountain,
Much less Asheville. I ain’t been up in a while.
When all you see is Floridiots in flowerdy shirts,
Motorcycle men with ponytails, New Jerseys with yipper dogs,
Pouting kids listening to earphones, you don’t go back.
But down here, if you squint just right — and remember —
The tower goes away, the Rat still creeps, and you can almost
Hear an eagle scree before she dives — the Pisgah God meant for us to see.
This House
My father built this stout old place in 1914.
We lived in a tarpaper shack while he worked
On it. Moving day was like coming to a castle.
I was eight. I’m comfortable here yet.
Next move? Carry me out in a casket.
Papa was a scrounger — windows came from
A church they razed down at Luther, and its front step
Became the granite mantel over our fireplace.
Always was a comfortable house,
It sighs and creaks like it has opinions.
Me and Birdie remodeled in the fifties, put in
Pine paneling, central heat I’m too tight to use,
A new bathroom. Only thing I regret is covering
White clapboard with green asbestos shingles.
Birdie wanted it to look modern. I’d take em off,
But asbestos lung ain’t a thing I’d care to die of.
I love watching Birdie’s flowers bloom,
Tulips and yellowbells, japonica and lilacs,
Clematis and iris, snowballs and peony roses.
I keep ’em up because of her, and, besides,
I’d almost as soon raise tulips as taters.
You can’t eat flowers, but they sure dress up a table.
The masterest thing about this fine old place?
From the front porch you spy Mount Pisgah,
And don’t see a neighbor in any direction.
Knock on wood, Lord willing, it’ll stay that way.
Olan Mills
There’s a faded picture in the front room
Of me and Birdie back when I went to church
All posed up for that squirrely traveling man
A-trying to catch her pretty and me peart.
She always took a good picture,
But he had a job of work to do on me.
Mr. and Mrs. Olan Mills, at your service.
Birdie
Ten years ago my sweet bride, Birdie,
Set up in the bed, said Lord have mercy …
Wake up, Posey … it’s my head …
Fell back, dead before she hit the pillow.
Gone before I waked enough to know
We’d never walk hand in hand again.
She won’t no bigger’n one of them squinch owls.
Her folks, teachers, everbody called her Birdie.
Shoot, I didn’t know her Christian name was Edith
Till we got a wedding license. We spent fifty fine years
In this old house together, sheltered by yonder ridge,
Heated by trusty cords of love and yellow locust.
Still miss her. Like a man with a sawed-off limb.
When I hear a yellowhammer or one of them wag-tail birds
Looking at me sideways. I’ll say Hey, Birdie, I’m doing good
For an old buzzard. But one of these first days
We’ll go walking again. She’ll flit off like that made her happy.
Might be nothing, but it’s a drab of hope for an old man.
Burying Ground
It’s mighty quiet on the side of the hill.
A pretty place, too, to lay down facing east
Against that trumpet blast they talk about
In the Revelations. I get up here ever now and again,
To tidy up, tend to plants, say howdy to Birdie.
Sometimes, like today, I just set a spell and think.
People don’t hardly have family burying grounds anymore.
It’s