If I Saw The Snake, and: Elegy: As Time Moves

Two Poems By Kiffin Rockwell If I Saw The Snake Even if I saw the snake, I could not shoot, For the little boy is walking across the dam; Glasses bring his golden head to arm's reach. When Grandfather George was twelve years old, his brother Burgess Hayes rode off to kill the Yankees. George was fourteen when Burge's sword came home. Two more years, and Major General Stoneman, USA, was quartered in the house. (A Yankee private grabbed a woven hive and lit out down-hill from the bench. The bees streamed out behind him, but flew back— they didn't chase him—to where the hive had stood. Then the Yanks whooped and had a mess of honey. ) But corn still grew, and Young George went to College. Then Mr. Hayes had married Sarah Berry. (He read some law, But maybe it was children, maybe the land . . . ) A dozen children, all grown up and married. The Squire cut off a farm for each; built a new house For himself and his wife, and settled down to read. Then Maggie came back — bright, pretty girl—a widow (Mr. Speaker I know I'm drunk, and drunk or sober, I've more brains than any other man in this house. ) George Hayes was seventy-five when Southern Power Drove him and Sarah, who took it hard, from the river farm That kept four generations of numerous Hayeses. The white house stood empty on the rich-grassed hill ; The mimosas died; picnickers broke in. One Uncle used the Old Hayes Place for cows, and then another bought it for week-ends. (It still is beautiful away, and lonely, The only private place on the whole dam lake. ) Two miles away, on an edge of the Old Hayes Place— What I have of it—with a gun across my knees, In the April sun, almost as warm as June, Watching a little boy, too young to care That his grandfather's fields are sold for surburban housing. Kiffin Rockwell, a native of North Carolina, but now professor of History at Northern Illinois University , has had a wide experience of travel, education, and teaching. Although he writes on a variety of subjects -from the classics to modern poetry-his poems arising from his Southern Appalachian experience and about the "gentry" class are more to our purpose; for, after all, as he says Southern Appalachia had its scattering of ' gentry" folk, and they arc a part of Appalachia too. 28 Kiffin Rockwell Elegy: As Time Moves An oak-leaved branch above the wagon-bed could not but tempt a fifteen-year old boy to snatch it, and himself; who, when he fell, thrust his right arm into the rolling wheel. Revolving spoke snapped like a twig the upper bone. Dr. Corpening was seven miles to town, and six full hours before his buggy came with the black bag and merciful laudanum. With the arm stretched tight from between an iron-bed-frame and a tough, third-cousin hired man who vised the hand to keep the muscles from the shocked contraction that would compound the fracture. They remembered afterward that he never cried. There was no drug at home but old farm stock, purgative, disinfectant; no help for pain. Only the human traction, the friend's voice speaking: "Lonnie boy, Lonnie boy! It'll be all right." Biting his lip, refusing with defiant pride the whiskey this once offered (Not else allowed except when smuggled into holiday baking.) 29 APPALACHIAN HERITAGE Doc gave opiate and set the bone; said they had done right. And so it proved. Next season the boy learned to throw left-handed. Strong again as a mule, and a little smarter. In college he could pitch from right or left, so there was some gain. And a fine set of clubs given by a widow to the left-handed preacher. Who else could use them? They dressed up his golf. -----Once in twenty years Grandfather Hayes raised his voice to me : We were in a wagon, and I reached up to grab a passing branch. "Never do that!" the old man almost shouted. When I told my father...