Plesant Valentine (poem)

The cemetery’s sweetest name sleeps beside
a stone wall where eighteen-wheelers
shudder the ground at a hard turn.  On a simple

granite monument only that name invites
curiosity where facts survive the grave
no better than flesh and bone.  Virginia

born and black in 1848, slavery
was a legacy for this runaway teen
fighting under stars-and-bars, awaiting

a heart-thumping run to the blue
where he simmered stew and fried
bacon for Union soldiers.  At war’s

end he bounced around milking
cows, haying, chopping wood
and building fences.  By sweat,

sore muscles and scrimping over
a decade he bought his own place,
a spacious white house edged

in pickets where he grew well-to-do
and hosted meals for the down-and-out.
Profiting in real estate and mortgages,

he kept cutting oak, maple,
and chestnut to make charcoal.
I imagine the proud old collier sleeping

beside the smoldering mounds
of slowly charring wood chunks,
his smudged face as black as ever.