Beneath The Waves Poem by David Welch

It lies within a long valley,
amongst rolling Green Mountain Peaks,
its southern Vermont's largest lake,
a place boaters and partiers seek.

But nature did not build this lake,
that task fell to the hand's of men,
built up a broad, high wall of earth
to ensure the valley was dammed.

I saw pictures of what went before,
a small town they called Mountain Mills,
built back when lumbebrjacks ruled here,
and could harvest trees to their fill.

There were nearby farmers around,
raising cows to sell their dairy,
who brought their product to this town
to try and make extra money.

There was a broad house, wide and white,
it most likely was the town inn,
where locals talked the news of the day,
where lumbermen revelled in sin.

Across from it was an old barn,
ancient a century ago,
leftover from before the town,
it watched the small main-street go.

There were housing, rambling houses,
packed in tight, this was before cars,
made sense, if you needed supplies
you didn't want to walk too far.

The road itself a line of brown,
straight and narrow, gravelly dirt,
there's not much sand around these parts,
they had to make what they had work.

Tiny shops, the family-owned kind,
butchers, dry goods, hometown bakers,
the places we nostalgize now,
we imagine they all 'kept their word.'

Near the back is a church spire,
simple-looking Protestant kind,
when people dressed to go to church,
find guidance for spirit and mind.

Behind it all, a lumber mill,
stacks of board-feet, three-stories high,
a chimney pumping out black smoke
from the big saw spinning inside.

Nearby a narrow railroad gauge
pulls up to take the wood away,
men work their shifts here 'round the clock,
it's tough work, but they need that pay.

Not far away, a small graveyard,
where men from the Civil War rest,
the last dying not long before,
at least that what the stones did attest.

But Connecticut needed power,
that's the reason nothing is left,
just cellar holes when water's low,
in the months when you see your breath.

It saddens me because most days
this lake is just a place for play,
under the water, under the earth…
someone always walks on our graves.

And they don't even know.