A Day of It
He’d put on a pot of beans
and leave them to simmer
then rake a pile of leaves
from her old flower beds
and get a smolder started.
He’d cut a plug of Brown Mule
and tuck it in his cheek
then lean on the rake,
shifting the pile now and then
to let air to the fire,
arranging the sparks
and the afternoon,
letting the wispy drift of smoke
write a thin cursive note
across the yard.
Later, he’d go in to his beans
and a baseball game on the radio,
seeing the pitches and hits
on the diamond in his mind.
On the Porch with Old Mr. Beesom
And I was with my grandfather
as it was his custom in those days
to take me with him on his rounds
though it seemed to me we just wound up places,
a store with a soda cooler
or someone’s house as was the case this time.
It was a sort of census I suppose
and Mr. Beesom was saying, “You see
that dog there,” pointing to a black short-hair
that was asleep on the porch in a patch of sun.
“There ain’t no telling what’s put in it breedwise.”
He also said something about the Raleigh man
with his salve and pills coming by and how the dog
was all wag when he did and what’s to be made of that?
Finally I asked Granddad if Mr. Beesom
was talking or singing as he stayed in time
with the rocker’s creaking runners
and Granddad lit another Lucky and let it
have its say until time enough had passed for my question to waft away
and then we had to be going it seemed
because all that needed accounting for had been accounted
and we were done doing whatever we were doing
on that Lucky Strike afternoon ramble.
When the Gods Came in Ships
They had no names
for the devils of this hell,
salt-sprayed, chafe of sandy scrape,
the snarls of grabbing vine,
saw-edged fronds of grasses and palms
and prickly pine boughs swatting their faces.
Through this sharp scrub
they could hardly pass
and almost invisible swarms
stung and bit,
fed on sticky skin, drew blood.
They yelped when a serpent slid
through whispering grasses and puddles
or worse, cocked for a strike.
What could be worse than this?
The land lashed them
and made them so angry,
they decided to seize it.
These poems are excerpted from A Day of It (LSU Press, January 2026).
Michael Chitwood’s work has received the L. E. Phillabaum Award from LSU Press, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Poetry. Chitwood long served as poetry editor for Southern Cultures, and taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Day of It (LSU Press) is Chitwood’s ninth book of poems.
Header image: “Who rung central?” H.C. White Co., North Bennington, Vt. : H.C. White Co., ca. 1904. Library of Congress.
