Almost Real

Just to the left of the peanut field is an indian graveyard,
about a hundred yards into the woods. Mostly invisible
unless you know just what to look for, or, like me,
you were taught.

It was my father who taught me, walking me in the woods
as a child, showing me the slight mounds and odd stones
hidden under decades of pine needles and leaves.
It does not lie on any maps except one he drew as a boy

when his own father showed him the marks of the forgotten
indians who lived there. Too small a group
to even be called a tribe. A family maybe. A clan perhaps,
their name lost to history and the mercy of white strangers

tuned into the land and history. There are other things
in those woods. A still, rusted now and fallen to one side,
a remnant of prohabition, full of sludge that,
if you have the courage to lean in and breath

stlll smells of moonshine. Further in, along a creek
downwater from the mill pond is the mill itself,
a grain mill once, with the round stones embedded
in the soft moist earth. There is a rusted sawmill a bit further

down. It looks wrecked, like some madman
took an axe to it in a fit, or like the revenuers
mistoook it for a still, everything broken in violence.
The mill pond is owned by the beavers now.

My grandfather waged a war with the beavers for most of his life.
Dynamiting their dams ever year or so and then leaving them
to build again. And again. Once my grandfather died,
the beavers won the war. and the pond sits high.

This is where the best of my childhood was spent.
Often alone. At times with the men seeking to be
an example in my life. Walking. Listening to stories.
Imagination so well fed that at times I was never certain

what was history and what my my mind’s creation,
and not really caring. Both had value and a life
full of both has served me well. Fact and fiction
making something whole, more real than real

About this poem

The places I write about are real. They lie in the woods in the photograph. My father and grandfather were both custodians and historians of the few hundred acres in Surry County, Virginia my grandfather lived on. I spent summers there.

I have a vivid imagination, fueled by real life and books and old people’s tales, and by my own need for a world more romantic than the one we live in. Mostly it has served me well.

About reality, imagination, love, faith, history, family and more. Poetry is never about one thing.

Tom