Henry River An American Ruin
Poems by Tim
Peeler
Henry River: An American Ruin
Poems by Tim Peeler
Š2015 by Tim Peeler Cover and author photos by Penny A. Peeler All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of written reviews. ISBN 978-1-929878-70-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015941916 First edition
PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733 www.lummoxpress.com Printed in the United States of America
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Note from the Author The ghost town of Henry River is located in the southeast corner of Burke County in the Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. Built at the turn of the 20th Century, the village, as it is often called now, has been mostly deserted since the 1970’s when, soon after a change in ownership, the mill burned. The brick company store still stands along with twenty or so haggard rent houses that line State Road 1002 as it meanders uphill toward Interstate 40, a little over a mile away. In 2011, a film company chose Henry River as the location for the protagonist’s childhood home in the first Hunger Games movie. Interest in the site sky rocketed. Individuals and tour groups made the location a destination. What had been a popular spot for photographers and those with an interest in local and regional history now became a part of pop culture. The poems in this volume reflect on the historical Henry River with some reference to the intrusive forces of the film industry. Some are responses to photographs; others are based on stories that Henry River natives have shared with me, while some are sheer flights of fancy. All of them, however, share an empathy and reverence for those who lived and worked in Henry River. Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank the editors of Lummox, Drafthorse Literary Journal, and the authors of Henry River Mill Village, where some of these poems first appeared. He also wishes to thank Mel Newton, Richard Hefner, and Ray Burns for their interest in this project. In Memory of Bud Rudisill
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It’s always been difficult for me to wade through the subjective haze, which has become contemporary American poetry. At first glance that might seem to be a rather bland statement. Yet, since Whitman and Dickinson introduced the world to the concept of “organic verse,” American poets have taken the genre in multiple directions that continue to expand. To list the exponentially growing movements would be little more than a rudimentary exercise in “who knows what.” However, when the smoke clears the method of overwhelming choice has become the free verse narrative. That which seems easy while being anything but. Think about writing a song. Consider the relationship between Brian Wilson and Mike Love when Love focuses upon “the hook.” A poet has that luxury only in the context of the more primitive levels on the rung. The present day narrative wordsmiths are often torn between their concepts of what is or is not profound. Dr. Williams showed us that profundity has a natural existence in the simple recording of reality and the concept of “things.” I met Tim Peeler in 1999. Oddly, it was a simple complimentary note related to a piece of fiction I’d read in a small press journal. He immediately directed me to his recently published book of poems, “Touching All the Bases,” a collection of baseball poetry. I knew immediately that I had to meet him. After that we began a correspondence that hasn’t lost its strength over these past 15 years. I’ve had not only the pleasure of publishing several of his books, but the privilege of watching him hone his craft on a daily basis. I can’t recall the exact moment when I realized he had found “it,” but I remember vividly realizing at some point that he’d reached a very significant plateau and that all the tools were in order to allow his visions and perceptions to take hold.
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In America, we’ve long since passed a point in which “culture” can be an all inclusive concept. We are a potpourri of cultures. Some so tiny as to be almost less than obscure. Tim Peeler looks at the amalgam of community, breaks down the cultures, and assesses them poetically with the keenest of visions. He sees the things that the rest of us have viewed for so long that we no longer notice. There is a value in such perceptions as well as a beauty that only the weakest among us can ignore. Carter Monroe April 21, 2015
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Henry River 1 He knew in his gut they were disturbing the ghosts, Stomping around on broken porches, Building a set in the company store, Slowing the local traffic, and now There were rumors they would blow up one Of the houses. He thought about Erastus Rudisill Designing the dam, the first bridge, Laying out the mill and all those lives Of labor, back breaking hours Still better than drought-stricken farms Till the mill burned thirty-five years ago, And houses that never had running water Became emptied tombs, and now A stage for post-apocalyptic Movie scenes, and he sensed the disturbance As if his own nerves lined Plank walls, open skull windows, Outhouses and pump handles, Doors swung wide open forever.
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Henry River 2 He remembered kerosene lanterns Swinging in the night across the hill, The neighbor’s hound that panicked Every time a truck crossed the bridge, The river spitting over a granite shelf Far below in the maw of the gorge. He remembered how his father snored, Worn out from a day at the mill, With a paper in his lap on the porch, His work shoes propped against the door, How Momma promised him a piece Of penny candy in the morning, And how he lay awake thinking As the moon crossed His bedroom window.
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Henry River 3 Nicknamed boys in overalls, Could be any mill hill In the black and white fifties, A place alive with baseball Afternoons, swimming or fishing In the “pool� above the dam. Everybody had a nickname Because baseball players And race car drivers all had one, And a boy needed one When he rode his bicycle Out Dog Trot and up the hill With his ragged ball glove On the handle bars Headed for the field.
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Henry River 4 Two ladies standing out front Of house number seven, In another time, Wearing Sunday best, Their hair pulled up, Faces blurred by time, On the right, a left-handed banjo, The other has her fiddle ready. It is a bright sunny day; The porch shadows are sharp And the players seem to squint As we wait In comfortable computer chairs, Or lounging on porches with laptops For them to strike up the music.
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Henry River 5 Mother league of dreams, You feel your bones tip As if the ship’s about to, Kettles and jugs on the porch, Wind leveraging maple limbs, You hear the buzzer, then The serious man on the TV With the warning voice. Sky black, she taught you To fear God disguised as nature, Disgusted with simple man, Old Testament thunder, Perilous in the apple orchard; You hear the barn door let go, The tin on the tractor shed, And she prays Lord if it Be thy will; then the hail That ruined everything Fell.
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Henry River 6 He could not verbalize The oddity of his feelings, and She could never understand His obsession with the cards, Meeting under the old bridge After church with the boys, The week’s grease scrubbed From faces and hands, Gray-suited, hobbled by brogans. Sometimes he’d draw a pistol On Shoehead’s old man, Or Childers in his goofy pointed hat. But the afternoon was loaded With sunshine, and his playful smile Could never pull the trigger On any game same enough For her to abide.
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Henry River 7 Fashion never runs out of youth; The world is a fine human factory, And beauty makes us stop to look Like someone who has never seen this road: Sirens in the muddy Henry River, A newspaper boy with a guitar Standing on the bridge above, Lookalike sisters in summer dresses Out front of the duplex mill house, A beautiful boy of four, Posed like a doll, German-Irish eyes set to see The quaint village’s whole history Till it’s discarded The way beauty abandons Flesh in the end.
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Henry River 8 It wasn’t the hand me down overalls Or the crew cut that momma gave you, Not the way you kept your hands In your pockets and looked down When you answered the teacher. You were bred for a mill hand Your sister told you when you Insisted that you would be a fireman Or a big league ball player. It’s stamped in your eyes, boy, She said; it’s a smell that Gets in your blood, and you Just nodded, looked at the Gravel road under your Brother’s old worn out shoes, But when you walked past The brick school in the town, You saw how the highway ran So straight and far and flat That in all your imagining, You only wanted to follow it.
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Henry River 9 The movie crew gone, Dogtrot is a bulldozer’s flat straight line From where the imploded house sat A month ago for ninety years, And now the weed eater’s fishing line Has slung the west side’s yards clean, And hands have carried the “set’s” Hung clotheslines and scattered debris, away. He drives the s turns slowly down through The ruined ghost town, the tunnel of Summer maples as green as it gets. He checks the gorge as he clicks Across the “new” bridge. The river is the same.
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Henry River 10 Every night the moon rose Above the trees across the river And the crickets and croakers Harmonized with the traffic Of the water and the road While the children floated Like ghosts in the dusk At the ball field Catching fireflies In chipped jelly jars Till mommas called From one bulb porches Up and down the hill.
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Henry River 11 Stacked stones for steps To a wide plank porch, And every boy posed in overalls With a surprised look as if The camera had trapped them In a moment when they were About to pose: Pa with his long legs crossed, The oldest boy holding the youngest Away from the glaring sun And our future eyes.
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Henry River 12 Night draws down like a double barrel; You wait for the sound of the hammer To stop on the neighbor’s back porch And you wonder, what is he building? People coming and going so fast With the mill slow and every night On the news, the war, the marches, Dilemmas that even Andy Griffith Or Marshall Dillon can’t work out, Boys on the hill volunteering instead Of waiting for the army to draft. Night draws down like a double barrel, And still you hear the sound of the hammer.
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Henry River 13 There was a hum you could hear some nights As if the looms in the old brick mill, Overlooking the river and dam, Had enveloped the entire hill With their deafening chatter And you no longer heard passing cars, Barking dogs, crescendos of crickets, Even your neighbors in the darkness Talking and smoking on their front porch. At supper, you watched your wife’s lips move, And you knew she was telling you Something about her mother, yet All you heard was the sounds of the looms Spinning away the hours.
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Henry River 14 Gapped toothed boys in overalls Sat with cane poles on the north bank Of the river down below the “new” bridge, For an afternoon, Free as Huckleberry Finn To argue what they knew About Fords and Chevys, About the prettiest girls at school; Not quite old enough to do anything With the former, or about the latter, Just to dream like cork floats In the green summer shadows.
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“Listen closely, beyond the wind in the green maples and the river flowing past the ruins, and you’ll almost hear the ghost-chatter of looms, the peddling of bikes by barefoot children headed to the ball field, and the melancholy refrain of a fiddle wafting like a memory. You’ll almost hear the rusting of tin-roofs, the stretching of kudzu’s endless reach, the earth taking back this mill village. And in the shadows, sliding among splintered sills and doorjambs, bowed porch planks and fading recollections, you’ll almost see greasy, tired faces, hollow-eyes, and the little cemetery beneath the weeds. This is yet another beautifully haunting collection from Tim Peeler whose reverent poems don’t disturb these ghosts but, rather, lull the reader into “the kind of sadness children feel but have no name for,” and when you get to the end you’ll flip to page one, unable to let that feeling go just yet.”
—Michel Stone, author of The Iguana Tree
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