Here in a valley grown with weeds, that hill
above us looking down, I see a mill
and hear its creak and smell the fresh-ground flow
that cooking made so sweet. And here I know
that echoes of a distant past crowd in.
An old man’s memory sees it now as then.
Run quick and fetch a doctor cross that hill
and mend the bloody damage of the mill
that ground like sugar cane the fingers
of this boy. My thoughts on looking flew
past all those years I stared at its misshape
and though but little of a hand’s escape
through surgery done by gathered lanterns low
to serve my Dad some ninety years by now.
He pointed with it then. He showed the spot
where he and brother George next day took what
was left, two fingers dead, and with some care
dug in the earth and placed them wondering there.
David H. Briggs
Because he had lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand, my father always shook hands left-handed. His boyhood home where this incident occurred was at Brush Creek, North Carolina. Brush Creek is located near Asheville and today claims a population of 500. My father left Brush Creek to cross the mountains and attend Maryville College in East Tennessee. After earning his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, he returned to teach at Maryville College for most of his life.
When we visited my father’s home site, nothing remained of the original buildings, but my father still claimed that he knew the location of his buried fingers “within ten feet.”
