Communing on Cabin Creek

Remembering stories of way back when.

Everytime he passes
the sign
for Cabin Creek,
Timothy James
pulls off at the exit
and parks his car
along the bank
of the tiny stream.

He walks down
to its edge, 
kicks off his shoes, 
peels off his socks, 
rolls up his jeans, 
wades in up to his ankles, 
stares upstream, 
and wonders
how it must have been
back then, when 
Joyce Ann grew up here,
grew up way up
the infamous creek.

A coal camp along Cabin Creek, WVA, long ago.

Back then, 
there was a tight-knit community
of coal mining families
living in small wood frame houses, 
next to the creek, 
next to the mine, 
next to the company store,
immigrants from Great Britian, Ireland and Wales,
African Americans from the South,
poor whites from other parts of Appalachia,
working shoulder to shoulder,
picking and shoveling coal,
returning home each evening,
exhausted and covered in black dust,
much of which also 
settled in their lungs.

They were paid in scrip,
coal company money 
only recognized
by the coal company,
used to pay the rent
for their coal company houses
and buy groceries
from the coal company general store,
a sorry imbalance
that triggered the coal wars.

Timothy James heard
all these stories
of growing up, 
way up Cabin Creek, 
over so many years 
of conversations with
Joyce Ann at 
her kitchen table,
over pancakes and bacon
on Saturday mornings
after his sleepovers 
with his best friend,
Joyce Ann's oldest son.

That's what
comes to mind now
when Timothy James
stands ankle-deep 
in Cabin Creek.

Now, he always 
grabs a smooth flat stone
or two, takes them home
and pitches them into 
his vegetable garden,
reminders of Joyce Ann's
stories and times
way back when.