Everything I remember of Mississippi has a surreal feeling.
Everything seemed alien down there
partly, of course, because I was in a kind of shock:
I have a life, and this is not it.
Farms still had slaves' quarters.
We were renting one.
A pileated woodpecker woke us, mornings, drumming on its tin roof.
Things grew out of season: in April there were
horned-devil caterpillars in the cotton stubble.
Water came rusty and oily from the pump.
The creek flowed either way, following the wind.
In town one street was still lined with impossibly tall elms
that met and formed a vaulted roof, fifty feet high,
and one of those houses where the black soot inside
jars the eye against the bright white paint outside
what's left from a fire, like Merricat's castle, at the end of the row.
On the farm we could walk through a pine thicket
and see a big, tall, tree of unknown kind
towering over an old barn.
We walked through the pines to see the base,
and that tree seemed to have none. It began
about three feet off the ground, and grew straight up.
On second glance, it grew from a sort of stalk
that grew parallel with the ground, about three feet up,
and led...inside the barn.
The tree had sprouted in the barn's earth floor
three feet straight up, fifteen feet straight along,
till it found room to reach its splendid height.
That was the first paulownia tree we'd seen.
I've mostly lived in woods, and trees do funny things,
but I've never seen another tree grow like that.
Status update: Of course it's not a poem. Y'think that on Day Nine of Salmonella Torture my brain's together enough to write poems? It's a memory, here shared with the Poets and Storytellers United.
I love this, Priscilla. It reminds me so much of the East Nebraska farm where I grew up. My dad share cropped out 120 place from Grandpa. When Grandpa died the farm went to Mom and Dad. Then us kids, but as you saw, we sold it.
ReplyDeleteI am glad yours is still yours or you guy's.
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I'm glad a few of us in Virginia have "held fast what is ours." In Mississippi I'm told they didn't.
DeleteHey we both had woodpeckers in our poems this morning. Thanks for stopping by mine, Priscilla! What an AMAZING tree you have described....we see that here on the west coast, where the winds reach 100 mph at times - trees sprouting from the unlikeliest of places, and hanging on...........it fills me with awe. I would love to see a photo of your tree.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a photo album of that trip and the weirdly pretty town of Corinth, Mississippi, in 1982. I'm told it's been yuppified by now, that the farm where the determined paulownia tree grew that way has become a golf course.
DeleteI've been startled by a woodpecker on the metal gutter of the house. Not fun. I'd also like to see that tree. I looked it up - does it have purple blooms?
ReplyDeleteYes. It's an invasive species actually, but so pretty and so valuable that people encourage it anyway.
DeleteTrees do funny things and grow in unexpected ways. Interesting narrative that you shared.
ReplyDeleteYes--I've seen interesting trees everywhere I've gone, but that one was the strangest.
DeleteReads like a poem to me. I love it very much anyway! (May I call it a prose-poem?)
ReplyDeleteOf course you may! Thank you! (Disney's little skunk: "You may call me Flower if you want to.")
DeleteYou paint such a vivid picture. Yes, this is a poem! I think I would be very out-of-sorts in Mississippi. And the slave quarters would give me such a creepy feeling. This is a good read.
ReplyDeleteThere were specific stories about people who'd stayed there in the past, too...However, one Mississippi memory really deserves to be shared. I saw the shabby old houses as in John Hurt videos, and the obvious points at which better-off and worse-off families had been separated into different zones in town. The church we attended was out in the country. It wasn't strange, except in the context of "Mississippi," that the church was racially integrated. There was a White family that went out and picked up a disabled Black woman, and pushed her wheelchair around the building.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful memory. Thank you so much for sharing. The tree sounds quite remarkable....and goes to show what we're capable of when trying to find the light! It would be a great metaphor.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it would! Thanks to all who've read, commented, and shared.
DeleteI do love it when trees grow through any obstacle. What a wondrous sight that must've been.
ReplyDeleteI hope your brain (and your tummy) are doing better!
Much better, thanks. Since writing the "things not to say" post I've even been doing a little yard work. I hope you're well, too!
ReplyDelete