Personal History

Critz, Virginia, Summer 2006

I.

Cicada husks cling to the sycamores,
papery fragile things, & your mother
reads the weathered cemetery sign.

Slaves were buried in wicker baskets,
it says, & you see their bodies turning
into the trees, into the boxwoods dotting

the corners of the forest path & growing
over the 19th century ironwork fence.
Why wicker, you ask, thinking of patios,

hot summer days with water guns
& rubber hoses. Your mother is silent,
then says Wicker decays quickly,

making it difficult to know where the
graves were. The soil caves as it disappears.
It is only through an absence of earth

that historians, she pauses, that families,
can tell where someone might rest.
You think that is not quite an answer.

Behind the plantation house is a curing shed,
tobacco dried & ground for chewing plug.
Your grandmother smokes, sitting on the front

porch & staring at the peacocks. Bold birds
living in your former playhouse, crying at
night. From the porthole window above

your bed in the attic, you can see
a full orange moon & you want to cry
for the joy of it too. The scarecrow in the

brown garden sings for the pumpkin in
the sky, the ponies & the swans join him, all
lifting their voices for this untouchable body.

II.

Have you confused this plantation with
your grandparents' house? Both are
in southern Virginia, both have wide open

fields for a boy to lose himself in.
Both are not for you anymore.
History is a silly thing, its scattering

of lives & its twisting of deaths.
It is terrifying & absurd & all together
up to you to write your own.

At least you have the chance to fashion
words around you & hide among them,
poems a poorly drawn hedge maze.

Think of those boxwoods & the stone
bear statue sleeping where the dirt
meets their many brown stems.

You crawl under the shrubs
& listen to the air around you,
breath on breath, distant call

of a crow, a lawnmower’s hum.
The weeds & roots cling around
your feet & they are lovely things,

scrabblers & laborers for the sun.
Surely they know of you, know you
better than you know yourself.

You are a grower of turnips whom
they welcome into their lives.
What cares does a plant have?

Pray for love & rain. Accept the soil’s food.
Survive the frost & dry autumn winds.
These are a man’s wishes too.