Day 20 of Nano. Sherry is giving the prompt for today at Real Toads. My favorite prompt yet. It is based on the free verse poetry of Al Purdy, poet laureate of Canada. She has gifted us his wonderful poem, Say the Names. It is a true gift. The saying of names of places we loved, people we loved. I am doing a haibun – a true prose accounting of something in our past and ended with a seasonal haiku. Haibun are always in first person and always non-fiction. I truly loved this prompt. I didn’t do it credit but I tried. Wee notes about the pronunciation: Bahama (buh HAY muh) and Moriah (mo-RYE-uh).
Tarheel
I am a North Carolina girl. Born and raised there. Some nights when I can’t sleep, I sit on my back steps and say the names like a litany: Tobacco Road, Research Triangle, Duke University. I go back in my mind and remember: the air smelling like cured tobacco and honeysuckle, the hamburgers at Fint’s Place where my father would sometimes go to play pool. He’d take me along and set me on one of the barstools where I would spin around and around and cadge nickels for the jukebox. The street where we lived in the house built by my great-grandfather’s grandfather – Holloway Street. Trips to the beach through small towns and all of them smelling of pit cooked barbecue and banana pudding and closer the salt of the ocean – Kinston, Wilson, Smithfield, Piney Green, Pumpkin Center all the way to Atlantic Beach and Fort Macon. In the summer the roads would be lined with fields of tobacco, soy beans, corn. Through it all like a silver ribbon, Eno River graces the land through which it flows.
And then the church cemetery where my family is buried – up through Roxboro and turning onto the Moriah Road winding across Lake Michie. Through roads again lined with tobacco and corn, small houses and large houses, newly built and long time ago built. My mother would point out that Aunt Rose lived there and Aunt Blanche raised her boys and Rose’s when Aunt Rose died of cancer too young. Through Stem, Oxford and at last at Bethany Church in Moriah. Both sides of the cemetery flanking the road. My great-grandfather’s great-great grandfather gave the land for use by the church. My family is buried there, the old stones grey and covered by lichen; Elizabeth and Baby Boy, Pearl, George, Celia, Josie and the newer stones, my grandparents Leo and Josie, my father and mother James Robert and Celia. The two huge magnolia trees give shelter in snow and sun. The soil is red as blood and filled with rocks – it took the backhoe crew two days to dig my father’s grave. These names and more sews my soul to this red soiled, kudzu laden land. From Ashville to White Lake, my heart holds too many names to count. Though I no longer at there, it is still my home – Tarheel born and raised.
honeysuckle drifts
over the land at night –
scents lay us to rest
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