Magnolia

Raymond Martin

He was born and raised a Virginian,
an old country boy who knew
every notch and hollow, had fished
every stream. Each bordered field
in that sweet Southern land  
had taken up residence in his heart  
where there were no boundaries.

It was why he’d walked Virginia’s
rich cadastral map that took on
more detail as the swift years passed.  
He knew each bluff and byway,
each culvert and creek where the history
of this nation changed, where change
had been written in blood.

Virginia was his country, and he
could name each tributary and tidewater
village, every burial ground and Civil War
campaign. Her rivers were poetry to him —
the Mattaponi     Rappahannock     Chickahominy —
and, if he could, he’d have rafted the sky
over Richmond, Roanoke, Alexandria.
He remembers fifty, sixty, years ago, the fine
hachures of families, the hard good lives
of friends, and his three dark years
in the Great War that forever marred
the world. He remembers, though he’s
getting old and the map has grown un-
recognizable: each bypass, interchange,  

strip mall alters history. Just ask Raymond. 
He once walked each county and, given time,
could still name them. To live a century
is a kind of vindication, and the names
of the dead swim back: choruses of praise 
and devotion     and a country boy’s long dirge
of grief. How deeply he’s loved Virginia.

Three Boys Cycling

I wish I could have thought of them
as three boys cycling, but once their laughter
wheeled closer, circling tall trees

at our property’s rim, their dark faces
were revealed, and I felt a wave surge over me
like grief     or fear. The boys were seeking help

in a strange country of neatly trimmed lawns
and white skin and they, too, were on edge.
Now that I could see them — how they held back

a little and spoke to me, then looked away —
I could tell the brave laughter I’d heard
was like a vine whose leaves had caught the light

and shined but whose roots had been singed.
It was a long way home for them and I regretted
my meager welcome, how I’d hesitated

to fetch the tools they needed. I knew then
it was fear I felt     and not yet grief. And I could see
they sensed what I was thinking

and what held me, and I watched them waiting,
hoping I could be trusted. I think they were smarter
than me     and more accustomed to being wounded,

that they knew before I did what was at stake.
And surely the boys understood that fixing the tire   
wouldn’t repair the situation.

Then the chore was done, the broken wheel
once again turning, a fading laughter glinting,
the golden autumn light falling.