Friday, June 13, 2008

Assimilation
By Jim Cox

From the west side of crooked creek
You can see long stretches of meadowland
Past the narrow waterway, abruptly ending
At the steep ascent of hills covered in white pine

Along the banks mole tunnels make the soft
Soil lumpy, turtles rest beneath the tangled
Vines and foliage of dozens of plant species,
Some so rare they make you laugh

Early mornings when I walk the gravel road
Cut in for the campground near the creek
A great blue heron rises from her nest
Flying to the topmost branches of a hickory

She watches me go by and then returns
To the thicket grown dense on a shallow bend
Such is the joy of the morning: What grave
Trials can alter the peace of this land?

On the east side of the creek the chainsaws
Topple trees; the big machines’ backward beeps
Signal the change – fairways eight and nine
Will line that side right up to water’s edge

The new golf course by the Eastern Band of Cherokees
Will bring the fat rich tourists to the mountains
Empty their pockets as empty as their eyes
A right recompense given the tribe’s history

Now the Indians can truly say, “I know the cold
Hand that hides the anguish in your heart;
Because of that my eyes have lost their glimmer,
Their stars dying, my vision grows dimmer.

I have been these four hundred years and more
Taking in the white man’s way, I know the tongue,
The fear and arrogance that has gone beyond
The awareness of respect or redemption.”

Still, the moles are driven from their homes,
Two wounded ones that crawled out to cross
To safety lie dead at my feet, the turtle’s cracked back
Suffers the sun, the great blue heron gone.

4 comments:

  1. Jim,
    This sounds like a poetic echo of my
    piece on foxes, turkeys and smoke-holes. Again, the presence of bulldozers and noise in a once quiet spot. Moles, turtles and herons sacrificed for a golf course.
    Anonymous

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  2. Jim, I like Assimilation. Good title.
    I like the way this poem pulls and tugs me
    forward across gravel, along the bank of
    Crooked Creek. I dislike what I stumble
    upon, a new golf course on sacred land.
    Thanks for sharing.

    Nancy Simpson

    ReplyDelete
  3. What wonderful observations and insights! This poem makes me feel as if I am there, seeing the natural world in all its everlasting and marvelous glory, while at the same time I, too, grieve about the changes that are despoiling it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jim- Your images are very strong in this but the one about the beeping bulldozer breaking the natural stillness really resonated with me. When I walk along the Greenway here in Franklin that sound makes me grit my teeth. It seems the new aesthetic in Western NC is big clay banks & our mountain motto is "rape 'em & scrape 'em". The lament of your poem well describes what has become the norm.

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