We drive to the Homeplace,
near the old Enterprise Community,
Gibson County, West Tennessee.
Here Granny and Daddy Joe raised
the kids who lived,
my father the youngest,
and buried the five who didn’t.
Burned by lightening decades ago,
only mounds of brick and
rickety outbuildings remain.
There, the smoke house;
here, a chit box
used to pay hired help.
Forgotten lives quicken,
roused in stories told
by aging cousins,
bent old friend Harry,
and yellowed pictures.
The breeze is sweet on this hillside.
Old trees stand high,
bamboo shoots insist on sunlight,
and pesky moles shape the soil’s economy.
(No. 29 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)
