Making Berry Ink
In 1785, on the land where Clemson University now stands, the United States government signed a treaty. It promised the Cherokee people, “The hatchet shall be forever buried.” But that didn’t save the Cherokee town of Esseneca.
Summer grape grows stout on the pumphouse fence, its leaves
Flushed pale this late, its dark fruits dwindled or lost to birds.
Gathered a sloppy shirt-full for ink and left.
Brown lakewater lapped at the dike’s white riprap. Seedlings
Wrinkled, blackgum and maple, pursed in the hot wind.
Swallows cut down gnats, diving above the station’s open vats
Furiously as I turned back to the access trail
Through the near forest heading for home. And then
The overgrown site of Fort Rutledge erupted
From the dormant sterility of the woods.
Its decaying memory laid bare. Our treaty men
Arrived here in 1785 riding
With promises of friendship perpetual,
Buried hatchets, seeds for a future. Though we
Had already shelled the town we called Esseneca,
Firelight burning through torched dusk. Later when the dams
Were built, the valley swamped, the town’s memory
Was all but lost. Pot shards, terraces, soggy fields
Beneath a hundred feet of brine. Countless bone-scraps
Unmoved to dry ground, where I stand now. Where, at home,
My shirt reveals grape stains, an awful irony
Purple, and a patient crushing grows beneath my palms.
Add vinegar and salt, dissolve. This ink flows freely,
Lakebed-dark. But thinner, don’t you know, thin as blood.
South Dike
Clemson, South Carolina
Carson Colenbaugh is a poet and forest ecologist from Kennesaw, Georgia. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Terrain.org, Birmingham Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Ecological work of his can be found in Human Ecology and Castanea, the journal of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society.