ARCHIVES OF THE HOW-IT-WAS CLUB

 

Let’s say a Methodist Church basement.

Gathered are the children of an absent-minded God,

themselves absent clear vision, absent the concise hand

needed for captioning the scalloped-edged glimpses

of how they got by, their common history,

quilting, canning, butchering hogs,

that will seem exotic to their children’s children

with an assigned interest in local color.

 

Someone laid hands on a cassette recorder.

They cackle and croon.  They sign on,

this is Sallie Murphy, born nineteen hundred and four,

as though these reminiscences are a radio show.

Come on, granny, get to it,

but she’s more interested in telling us who

than what and what’s what we need

for our current purposes.

This is a different country

and we can’t get graded on which cousin

or visitor from Ohio helped prime tobacco.

We need the low down on gutting a hog.

Wasn’t there blood involved?

 

This is what happens

when you let people tell their own story.

There’s no hurry, no precision,

so very little we can use.

 

 

Michael Chitwood