Fulton in Verse

My wife and I thought your story on Fulton’s Bottom very poignant (“‘The Greatest Place on Earth,'” Cover Story, Sept. 12). I had written a poem about the very same thing at the time of the Reconciliation ceremony, held not far from there, titled “Fulton’s Bottom”:

Big ball, fiery red —

Pendulum of time,

Sink into the river’s source

Below the horizon line.

Water wind through mountains,

Water wear away,

Stony tomb of river bank

And confines of the clay.

Voices in the water

Rise and murmer in the swirl,

By the banks of Fulton’s Bottom

Where a neighborhood once stood.

Big ball, steel gray fist

Wreck, split and shatter

Some thought it didn’t matter —

Bulldozer and backhoe razed them away.

Those that lived there

Were sent to stray and scatter

To forgotten corners of the town,

Invisibility renewed.

Missing are the roofs and ceilings,

Gone foundations and the walls,

But not indifference or feelings —

The years have’t scraped them away.

Voices in the water

Swirl and rise un-silenced

To find a way to reconcile

And put the past behind us.

Water wind through mountains,

Water wear away,

Stony tomb of riverbank

And confines of the clay.

Tom Brown
Henrico

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