Five Acres And Independence Poem by Barry Middleton

Five acres and independence
was a book my mother read;
the book became a dream,
then reality, now a memory.
You can still buy the book.
Anything I write will sound
too idyllic to be true
but it is truth itself.
The old frame farmhouse,
was painted white,
the floors squeaked,
it was built on the brick foundation
of someone's burned out hope.
Yellow/orange day lilies bloomed
along the gravel drive
perhaps before my birth.
I would bring improvements,
irises of every color,
purloined from this and that auntie
and a tiny holly tree grew
and grows, a giant, there still
having resisted even a tornado.
I planted nasturtiums when
I was six, my first experiment
in juvenile horticulture.
Redbud bloomed in the front corner.
Later I would plant the dogwood tree
beneath my father's lonely window
to give some comfort to his old age.
There were, I swear, a dozen plum trees
that mother made into endless jelly.
I could munch plums while mowing grass
and often new trees would sprout
from where I spit the seed.
There were six apple trees,
that's a lot of pie.
There were two pear for a full house -
four kids, one adult and a large man.
There were peaches for cobbler,
anything God thought of would grow.
Four good pecans were on the place,
enough for the squirrels
and more pie for all of us.
In the back, the blackberry patch,
I thought for sure inspired
the Uncle Remus tales,
provided a home for Brer Rabbit.
The woods were full of muscadines,
a black walnut tree, hickory, oak,
gum, sycamore, pine, beech
and red cedar Christmas trees.
There was lots of room for boys,
three of us to name the hills,
build the fort and tree house,
dam the creek, drag home
dinosaur age petrified wood,
hunt, fish, swim nearby Short Creek.
There was a vegetable garden,
huge beside the hand built
shed we called the barn.
Corn, tomatoes, greens, lettuce,
beets and radishes, pole beans,
limas, eggplant, cantaloupe,
carrots, summer squash,
green and hot peppers,
peas out the wazoo,
pumpkins, peanuts,
potatoes, turnips
and cucumbers galore.
Which brings up pickle.
OMG! Bread and butter pickles
swimming with onions,
fourteen day sweets,
five day spicy, to die for.
So many memories
crowd my brain.
Raccoons roamed,
bobcats and red foxes,
there but not often seen,
rabbits and squirrels
were in abundance,
quail, doves,
the occasional lost wood duck
or mallard landing on
Kimball's pond.
Memories! My parents,
my brothers, my sister,
all the home town friends
that roamed with us,
all scouts, cubs, boys,
brownies and girls.
Campfire burned
marshmallows,
Shady Valley,
Do-Land,
Eagle Pass.
Gone now, never to be
recaptured. Gone, lost,
blown away with time's wind...
someone should remember,
someone does remember.