Grandfather's Woods

To go to the woods
Follow the path through the gardens,
Starting at the woodpile past the splitting block,
Walk through the tall grass growing by the chicken yard fence,
Then pause for a moment to look yonder at the next town,
Nine miles away, its white schoolhouse like a chalk mark,
Against the sky's edge we later learned to call horizon;
It looks so close, but we have no way to get there,
No automobile, no horse and buggy, we imagine
The ones who live there can see our house
On our ridge as we can see the one building large enough
To hold the entire village of Walls and Liles so agreeable
To call their little town Lilesville, County of Anson,
We scarcely know those people nine miles away
For we are the county seat and all official business
Must take place in our Courthouse, convened by our big bell,
Not to mention our several churches and funeral parlors,
They however, have their own cemetery, every soul written up
In Ripley's "Believe It or Not" sheltered by a single oak tree

To go to the woods
Take a look at the spot where the boys would pitch a tent
For sleeping out and play strip poker until the unlucky one
Must dance about in dark with flashlights played their tricks
Blinding the squirming boy who's never heard of Michelangelo
Don't stop to smell the American Beauty Rose that grows
Against the chicken yard fence, but keep going down the slope
Where butter beans and squash are bearing profusely as okra,
And the pear trees drop their fruit to mush and marmalade
Then cross the lower field behind the long-gone barn where
The family milk cow grazed on rabbit tobacco and native grass,
Kicking up arrowheads from Pee Dee indian camps
But before we reach the grapevine swing
We stop where four trees grow like corners of a house
Readymade to build a fort

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]