170
2019
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
FINALIST, 2018 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE BY CRAIG THOMPSON FRIEND
Day at a Historic Park
I sorrow walking a gently hilly countryside once traversed by Shakori and Eno, Sissipahaw and Occaneechi, Tutelo and Saponi. A gently hilly countryside, taken by Others who, pretending the Indigenous disappeared, ignored those who continued to traverse the ancient homelands that had been fertilized with Tuscarora blood.
I sorrow, touring mansion and fields saturated with the sweat of the enslaved: blacksmith Dick and cobbler Davey; cooks Milly and Charlotte; Chaney and Sabina, nurse maids; Jim Gundy, aged about 30 years, about 5 feet 10 inches high, well made, who once belonged to Edward Tansit of Franklin County who owned his wife, ran away in February 1820; and Weston, dark mulatto, about 24 or 25 years of age, 5 feet 4 or 5 inches high, stout, and well made, who ran away in April 1827 and went constantly armed with a gun.