Invisible to the traveler now,
two tracks through the grass,
but the discerning eye
can see two fence rows on each side.
Across the prairie and down
the hill it leads
over a little cement bridge,
with iron rails;
One missing.
Also missing is the house
and barn and windmill.
Not even a line of stones.
His early life,
his boyhood home,
has returned to the prairie
from whence it came.
The earth
reclaimed its own.
But the road remains
to show the way
to the past of my grandfather's life:
he walked this way to school.
-
Author:
dlherrmann (
Offline) - Published: October 17th, 2020 00:12
- Comment from author about the poem: This poem is the result of a mistake. The author had found the correct property, but was on the wrong boundary road. He later found the correct road – the line of stones, some bits broken glassware and the front yard fence. On his next trip all that had been cleared away. Despite the mistake, it's still a good poem.
- Category: Family
- Views: 9
Offline)
Comments2
hose paths of our past can bring such glorious memories.
Andy
Yes, as I revisit the land of my family where I grew up, I imagine all the criss-cross paths of the various indigenous nomads, the Spanish surveyors, the earliest white settlers who first fenced the fields, perhaps a Black enslaved laborer or field hand, a Mexican bracero tending corn or running down loose cattle on his Appaloosa, the 19th-century German settlers making German-style farms among the scrub and wild pasture, and late my family, my sunburned dad, mom tending the garden or calling my brothers home from the pond at dusk, and me a boy flying across the creek and bounding down the contoured hillsides bareback on my horse Castro. Even the dirt roads and cow paths and tree lines of my youth are hard to locate, my own footprints scattered and my trails to the woods overgrown with thorny vines. Glad to know that road of yours, at least, remains. Thanks for the well-tempered reverie.
Sounds like you're a Kansan too!
Central Texas, a crossroads of cultures and landscapes, cactus and parched outcroppings of rock, pine and oak forests, rolling hills of green pasture, cotton farms and cityscapes. The Wild West begins on one side of the road, the Old South ends on the other. Spanish-Mexican culture one step south, and the vast Midwest of small towns and farms just a step north.
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