History
you know what I’ll say, about history,
about days—the past is present, everything
repeats like a clock’s chime. just lingers on.
just fades like paint, stripped by sunlight
and rain blown in by August winds. that
is what I will say about these places, they
command history with steadfast foundations,
rusted door-hinges, old books’ pages worn down
into paper that looks more like flour as it falls
from the page, a spade by the door and bottles
of patent medicines littering the floor. where
history is made—small churches, flooded
homes when you leave them by boat at
midnight with only two changes of clothes,
the baby, and the dog. think of rural courthouses,
small-town cafés, deals sealed on word and name,
auctions and funerals, yes, this is how history is
made—and most of all, in fields, at dawn-break
with horse or tractor, history silently is made.
the young doctor, the washer woman, the
deputy and the country vet. the farmer
who loaned your uncle enough money
to open his garage or grocery twenty years ago.
the farmer’s own uncle, who loaned him enough
in 1944 to buy nine acres and maybe a horse.
all of them told tales even if they didn’t put
pen down to page. it’s hard to write by kerosene
light, you probably don’t do it unless it pays or
the rough weather kept you in all day. after her
husband died, she sold half the cattle off, then
in a year bought twice as many when she realized
she could more than deal. rotated the crops, sailed
on, as surefooted as a merchant captain in a storm,
she stared straight ahead and looked beyond the
grass-sick, the bad soil, the blind calf, the drought.
these are the people who made history, and they
knew, because they nailed it into the wall, planted
it into the ground, nursed it back to health, even
if they never wrote of it in any way—this is how
history is made.
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