A West Virginia Memory

Crops My grandfather used to swear that rocks grew in his fields. "Might be my finest crop," he said, and I, a child, believed him. Each spring at plowing time plow blades struck sparks on stone not there before in fields picked clean for harrowing and planting. They harnessed up the mule to slick iron-runnered sled, circled through shiny new-turned earth harvesting flat limestone slabs, In slack-time, after rains had washed them clean, my uncle chose proper stones judiciously, from great heaps that spring produced and mended his stone fences or built new ones, stacked tight and straight though mortarless. In fifty years, the fields I've worked have yielded up a less enduring crop. —Barbara Mabry A West Virginia Memory The hills are the basis of life in that land, both as life given—and taken. A harsh land with soft people, yet, and also, a soft land with harsh people. The land of my birth, With paths through blackberry and greenbrier. Kind winds blowing gently of a song forgotten. A greenness everywhere on her rugged slopes and she gives forth her inner blackness as if a painful abortion of her babe within. And all left to flow are her tears of acid. The nights of West Virginia mellow sharp lines and soaring peaks and the shadows embrace every living thing in her grasp till the dawn. So much time I have spent in those hills, in games, thoughtful solitude, in the questions of life. West Virginia is not bound by rivers and streams, for we all come from a land that calls from within us, to find greenness once again. —Thomas W. Chapman 52 ...