Memory of Moss

 

Memory of Moss

Through dense forest she guides me
to a wall of stones piled waist-high,
boulders lifted by black hands
in a land of white winters.

Caleb a slave escaped Virginia
to the Adirondack Mountains,
cleared 40 acres of northern jungle
axing tree, rolling rock, ton upon ton.
Caleb, her ancestor. In my whiteness
she wants me to understand.
In my infatuation, I try.

Caleb scratched out a living
no child would choose.
Slavery, they said, would be easier.
Not better, but warmer and less work.
It was family legend, a bitter family joke.
Abandoned fields reverted to birch, to maple,
then finally to conifer, the natural crop.

Boreal rainforest seems untouched
if not for this soft-spoken wall.
She swears she can hear slice of Caleb’s axe,
grunt of mule, echoes from a century plus a half.
In these crevices she can sniff
smears of his sweat, stains of his blood.

Stones break loose, tumble among duff.
“Roots topple walls,” she says touching my hand.
Shooing a lizard she gathers bits of moss
to stack in a jar like little green toupees
we carry back to the dirt road, the SUV,
the long easy drive to the suburbs.

…..

First published in Freshwater
photo by Willi Heidelbach