The Honeyflow

First bloom of improbable, thin silk-like beauty of our pink tree peony! 

It usually blooms much later in springtime than this. 

And usually, within a day or two, a wind-and-rain storm 

destroys its delicate petals. We shall see. . .

If has been about 50 years since we began this garden around our new house, 

where the topsoil had been graded off before the foundations were laid 

in what had been a field where tomatoes were grown. 

The builders claimed to have put the topsoil back

before they had seeded the front lawn. It didn't seem that way! 

Over the years we added a truckload and countless bags of mulch. 

And now, you can usually pull a weed, although I am sure

the soil would absorb more compost if it had a chance!

The Sprinkle House at Busro Creek

In 1809 the Shakers established a settlement called

West Union, at Busro Creek on the Wabash River,

in Indiana Territory. There they brought under

cultivation a two-thousand-acre tract Subsequently 

known as Shaker Prairie. During the next few years

they set up a distillery, a gristmill and a sawmill.

By 1820 they had constructed a three-story brick

community house having twenty-five rooms, twenty-

one fireplaces, and two kitchens (one for the women

and one for the men). The following year they built

a meeting house across the road from the dwelling

house.

An epidemic of malaria forced the Shakers to give up

the settlement in 1827. The meeting house alone was

left standing. For many years it was thought to be

a frame structure, but when it was torn down in 1875,

workmen discovered brick walls between the studs.

The present Sprinkle House was built with these

salvaged brick. A square, two-story residence in the

Federal Style, it now stands abandoned and open to the

weather on a gravel road five miles west of Oaktown,

a small farming community north of Vincennes.

Though we are gone for eight-score years, this place ---

this ruined hearth, bricks slipping from the walls---

is struck from what we saw: as though each face

that witnessed here were laid in tiers, all

joined as one.  However strange that seems

to you who stand here now, hearing the call

od mourning dove and the slow, steady stream 

and hum of workers bringing the honeyflow

to the beech tree, only remove the beam

from your own eye, soften your heart and know

we are your neighbors still. Would this be 

lasting, this clover, this wind that blows

through the broken windowframes, if we

found refuge solely in each other? We gave

our all to God, and to Mother Ann Lee;

for them we danced, and not ourselves. To save

was never our intent, but to become

true children of an earthly Zion. No grave

could hold that dream. Now that you've come

this far, rest in the shade and stillness,

walk here alone, notice the print of thumb

and finger on the scove-fired brick, guess

what songs we sang going out to the fields

each workday morning. Let your footsteps press

and sink in the mole-haunted grass, feel

earth's give and take. This is the race

we entered, and for your sake, won: the real.

Jared Carter

After the Rain, Cleveland State University, 1993, pages 33-34.

After I found Carter's poem in the old Laurel Review, I ordered his books! This poet is writing great stuff! Jared Carter has a website, too! This poem also interests me because I have read and studied about the Shakers since my parents moved to Shaker Heights in 1957. We lived upstairs in their home while both of us were finishing graduate work at Western Reserve. The Shakers are particularly interesting to me because they came out of the same period of 19th century Christian upheavals that produced the Mormons. And Mormonism is the religion I was raised in. And the attitude, the interest in--and wondering reverence-- in this poem for what my cousin once called "our forebearers", is very similar to my own.

Now, about this poem! Notice the easy grace with which the middle line in each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines in the following three-line grouping. Notice how the prose introduction throws you off the track so one can go along for quite a while innocently reading without pouncing on each rhyme.

Jared Carter will be back on this blog! But don't wait until then to look for more of his poetry on the internet and in your bookstore!