Greenville Creek

Slow and dark the water moves,
silently,
between verdant banks.

Beneath the canopy of willow, sycamore, and ash
we padded along overgrown paths,
youthful exuberance hushed,
senses alert for every danger –
stinging nettles,
the dreaded water moccasin,
hoods, cigarettes dangling from sneering lips.

From my backyard,
it seemed we could hurl stones into the
brown-green water.
But I was never fully at home
down by the “crick” –
that strange, wild, tangled place.

Once it had been home
to the Miami, the Shawnee,
the Delaware, the Wyandot.
They shared the world with
the white-tailed deer, the fox and the beaver,
the great blue heron and the king fisher.

Then their chiefs left
reluctant marks on
Mad Anthony’s deed,
and settlers poured in to
clear the land and till the
deep, black soil.

After yet another war, President Monroe
presumed to grant
water rights to one of his warriors.

Soon a grist mill arose,
thick black walnut boards
enclosing a labyrinth of machines.
Children dug the millrace,
pocketing 50 cents a day.
Precious stones from France,
expertly sharpened,
ground the corn and oats and rye and wheat into
gold dust.

The industrious citizens came to forget
those troubling nights when
Tecumseh stood defiantly,
illuminated by firelight
at the confluence of the Greenville and the Mud,
to protest the treaty
he never signed.

The Shooting Star vanished.
The mill grinds on.

Slow and dark the water moves,
silently,
between verdant banks.

CFB (2005/2011)

Tecumseh Point

Bear's Mill