Days of the Gristmill

"But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below,
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through wide open doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign."
  – Longfellow, "Tales of a Wayside Inn"



Days of the Gristmill

1.

The eyes of the historian
always carry a wishful air
to transport backwards and to place
a thumb to hold down a scene...

...A long and old October Day
by the bay channel of Black River,
As I watch an eagle that has sat
down her late fall carrion fish
on the brown beach to peck and gnaw,
I can't help but think back against
the foggy approach of coming
winter a day from years ago,
of Sudbury Mass at Old Post Road,
that which reached by gravel an inn,
a gristmill by day, nightly a tavern.
We might hear from some hundred
feet away around a cobbled wall
the murmurs of the small creek
that crawls through the gnarled oak wood
and lances past the inn to shoot
down in reckless pattern to the wheel
which turns slow tightly ungreased
and lets out a remote toll
as of an owl who has its head from
shadowed limb to call the orange moon.
A party of voices joins-in
but hid as an echo low from within
the stone walls of the tavern
and sent out the window candle lit
"The grog will be good, a break
of farmer's bread made by the grist,"
one of the comers delights
and pauses, and sees good cheer
soon dripping from his cold fist.