Poetry

Twelve eager rows of cars sat waiting while
an ooze of Christmas shoppers flowed across
their street beneath a signal giving right
of way but flashing now to hurry up.
She was behind them all and all behind

in general so it seemed to me who noticed
from the curb her death-like grip on tops
of bags that billowed out around her. And
like a sniper laid in wait frustration
watched until she got positioned in

the center of that busy place then let
the bottom of a bag break loose despite
her solid grip around its neck and someone’s
crockpot hit the street. She’d bought it
for the fact its liner came right out

and so it did and broke in shattered pieces
all across that space just as the light
above said go to cars who soon began
to honk because their go was now held up
by one poor shopper all alone in picking

up the bags her panic had turned loose
and all that glass. I watched her face change
through phases like the signal light above
embarrassed first and looking round as if
to make amends to honking cars who sought

a cop or someone anything to get her
out of there. Then pain appeared which dollars
wasted played some part I thought and changed
again and hung this time. A weary look I saw and
felt but soon away from there I then forgot.

Here in this valley grown with weeds, that hill
above us looking down, I see a mill

and feel its creak and smell the fresh-ground flow
that cooking made so sweet. And here I know

that echoes of a father’s past crowd in.
The old man’s memory hears it now as then.

Run quick and fetch a doctor round the hill
and mend the sudden damage of that mill

that chopped with cane the fingers stuck into
it by 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 these many years till 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.

A curious grave we’d come to see.
We went away, and left it be.                 

---

David H. Briggs

Because he had lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand, my father always shook hands left-handed. The mill that took his fingers ground sugar cane to make sorghum molasses. It was powered by a walking mule but had to have cane fed into it by hand.  The boyhood home site where this incident occurred was near 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.”

The following took place in Ooltewah, Tennessee.  It is one of those stories that has never left me, although it took place sometime in the late 1960’s. …

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