WHO WILL REMEMBER?
WHO WILL REMEMBER?
Cherish the Storytellers
Who will remember?
When the grave of a grandfather without a marker--- save for the stone gathered from the oak and hickory clad hill--- is covered by the humus of the decomposing garment of summer majesty…
Who will remember?
When the loving hands of a father fashioning a marker of concrete in the shadows of a barn for the tiny corpse of his infant son-- are stilled, and the tears but ancient vapor in the winter mists…
Who will remember?
When backward glances from wagons and ancient truck windows say goodbye to land owned since Delaware and Shawnee Indians were neighbors and elk and bear denizens of the deep forests; fathers and mothers and children and blood kin by the hundreds, original pioneers of the land, buried in the rocky hillsides…
Who will remember?
When the old swimming holes in Otter Creek, the Wet Fork, and Reeces Creek are visited no more by children on hot summer afternoons…
Who will remember?
When the splashing of cool water and the yips of joy from both the boy and dog at the old water gap are heard no more…
Who will remember?
When the children no longer sit as custom, legs crossed on wooden floors, waiting for their turn at the dinner table…
Who will remember?
When calls of nature no longer mean adventures with banty roosters on the journey to wooden outhouses shared by wasps and kingsnakes…
Who will remember?
When the long walk on dusty and gravel roads to the old church, the paper fans, the singing, the frenzied sermons of hellfire and eternal damnation, and afterwards the cold fried chicken eaten while sitting on colorful patchwork quilts of grandmothers on the slope of the hill are no longer norm or tradition…
Who will remember?
When the old piano accompanied by the harmony of aunts and cousins singing the old hymns, “Kneel at the Cross”, “Amazing Grace”, and “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” no longer hovers melodiously over the slope to the creek and the valley beyond…
Who will remember?
When hooks fashioned from safety pins no longer dangle beside the concrete slab covering the creek, and the children fishers become infirm and succumb to the abyss of time to become scattered in graves across mother earth …
Who will remember?
When the shrieks of terror from mischievous boys in a runaway jeep are tearing no more at the brush and brambles of an Ozark hillside…
Who will remember?
When the blood and gore, the nightmares and belligerent horrors imposed on boys asked too soon to be men on distant battlefields fade with them into eternity, untold stories and legend with them…
Who will remember?
When the old people who are the storytellers and binders to our own youth have joined those they love in heavenly embrace of reunion…
Who will remember? Who will tell the stories then? Recount the epitaphs and achievements of heroic grandfathers and grandmothers and the stories of everyday life and custom? Who will ensure that reunions are continued as gatherings of love, good food, and warm handshakes and embrace?
I wonder…..
Who will remember?
Copyright by Keith Wayne Ragan, May 9, 2019
Comments
Post a Comment