This series of four poems contemplates the Native American sites around my home in Granville, Ohio. Earthworks from the Hopewell culture (100 BCE – 500 CE) once filled this valley and perched on its hills. Six miles down the creek, complex geometric constructions (circles, squares, an octagon, an ellipse, burial mounds) covered thousands of acres. Urban construction and farming destroyed most of these in the 19th century, but the remaining Newark Earthworks are a World Heritage site. The earthworks once continued for miles west down the Racoon Creek valley near the hill where I live.
Flower Pot Hill
Searching for a Hopewell Site on Flower Pot Hill: Poem #1 of my Earthwork poems, Spring 2023. (The picture above looks from "Alligator Mound" toward Flowerpot Hill across the valley of Raccoon Creek.)
Context: I live on a wooded hill in rural Ohio, on the edge of the Appalachian Plateau. An imprecise map from the 1840s suggests remnants of an ancient Native American site just a short walk along the ridge behind my house. My poem shares my walk through the early spring woods to look for this site.
Poem (Formal structure: ping start rhyming first line):
High hill swift hawks hunt spring game Faint ditch still deer seek March blooms walk past low mound old map hints land holds lost art first ones’ homes
Notes: I realize that by strict convention, “game” at the end of line one should rhyme with “blooms” and “homes” in this template. But to allow the meaningful words that I want, I permit myself assonance and near-rhyme in place of a moon/spoon/June type rhyme. My end rhymes here all have long vowels and an “m”. Close enough?
Successful poems should perhaps stand on their own without much explication. Titles (for old Chinese poems or modern English ones) can provide some useful context. But, beyond that, here are some guides to my thoughts in writing the poem. “Searching” and “Home” were key concepts.
1. Searching: Hawks hunt prey, deer search for greens, I look for the ancient site. Gloss: Hawks and deer were part of the Native Americans’ world. And they are still here in my world, whenever I walk. Riding the thermals above the hills. Flashing their white tails and running from my presence. They connect my present with the lost past.
2. Home: I am exploring the environs of my home… but acknowledging that this was once the home of earlier peoples. It is important to me to place the word “home” as the significant final word. This space is not just a “Native American site.” It was those people’s home.
3. “Still deer.” “Still” is parallel in grammar (adjective), parallel in concept (motion), and deliberately anti-parallel in meaning to “swift”. And “still” works at two levels: The deer are still compared to the swift hawks (at least when undisturbed). Yet “still” also adds a secondary meaning of continuing in time. Deer still browse in the forest, as they did in Native American times. That second sense of “still” is an adverb, so not grammatically parallel, but it is there for the reader to enjoy. Also, the initial “s” assonance of swift and still pleases my ear.
Newark Shaman
Newark Shaman. Poem #2 of my Earthwork poems Context: At the Hopewell site in Newark, Ohio, an earthen ellipse enclosed an area of burial mounds. In the 1850s, railroad construction cut through the ellipse and leveled the grave mounds. In 1881, workers digging a basement near the railroad grade uncovered a remarkable stone figurine, now termed the Newark Shaman.
Crafted of greenish stone, the human figure wears a bearskin cloak and holds a severed head in its lap. Some Native American lore depicts the moon as a man holding a human head. So this “shaman” may represent the moon or a lunar ritual. Scholars posit that nearby geometric earthworks themselves marked important cycles of the moon.
Newark Shaman Poem: (Ping start non-rhyming first line)
Steel rails cut rock scorn dry dust Earth arc held clay blest rich dead Cloaked priest jade bear wards dim rite Moon wanes past dusk lap holds head
Notes: I set “steel rails” against “earth arc.” Steel (metal) contrasts with earth. A rail is long and straight, a shape that contrasts with the curving “arc.” “Steel lines” would make the shape contrast more obvious, but “rail” is a more specific description.
The opening lines contrast yin and yang images. The first line is very yang. “Dry dust” is hot, dry, and not fertile. The scene is above ground, in the heat of the bright sky (yang). The Second line is very yin: The earth is yin. And “rich” in the context of earth/soil contrasts with “dry”. Rich earth is wet, fertile, dark, feminine.
Also, a second meaning works for “rich” here too. “Dust” brings to mind the dead (cremated remains; dust-to-dust). The modern world treats this dust as trash, but the ancient world respected these dead as “rich,” honored. And grave mounds perhaps held higher status individuals, with comparatively ‘rich’ grave goods.
Moundbuilder’s Country Club
Moundbuilder’s Country Club: poem #3 of my Earthwork poems. Context: Moundbuilder’s Country Club (Newark, Ohio) maintained a golf course on 2,000 year old Native American earthworks with complex lunar alignments. For decades, its duffers chased their little white balls through the ancient sacred site. The club’s website once bragged: "The golf course at Moundbuilders is unlike any other in the world. It is designed around famous Prehistoric Native American Earthworks that come into play on eleven of the holes."
In December of 2022, the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruled that the state could exercise ‘eminent domain’ to acquire the site as a museum park. The golfers were not happy. But this opened the way for UNESCO to recognize the Newark Earthworks as a World Heritage site. Which it now is!
Moundbuilder’s Country ClubPoem (ze start rhyming first line)
Gap* marks high moon rise up full Green scores Top Flite** drop in hole World finds fresh course through our trap Court rights old plan golf club stole
Notes: *Gaps in the octagonal earthworks allowed an ancient observer standing at a central location to view the moon rise and set at extreme points of long astronomical cycles. At least that is the theory of some scholars. Whatever the details, the moon’s motions were clearly significant to this early culture. The country club worked the gaps, mounds, and interior areas (their golf greens) into its course design. I see “gap” (noun) as parallel/resonant to “green” (used as a noun) because both are topographical aspects of the site’s design.
**Top Flite is a brand of golf ball. So against the large white moon rising, I juxtapose a small white ball dropping.
Full/hole. Near-rhymes, with a long vowel and shared ending consonant. Fullness contrasts with emptiness (hole). At another level “hole and “whole” are homophones. So “hole,” as pronounced, is both parallel (whole) and anti-parallel (hole) to “full.”
Walking Tour of Newark Earthworks
Poem #4 of my Earthwork poems. Context: April, 2023. I joined a walking tour through Newark, Ohio, to see remnants of ancient Native American earthworks that modern development has razed. Pleasant morning, sweating by noon. The peaceful walk was jarred by motorcycles zooming to the Jug’z Tavern biker bar. Just down the highway, the “Indian Mound Mall” has seen better days. Sears is bankrupt. Formal style: Ze start non-rhyming first line.
Poem:
Feet stalk slow down cool grass paths Hogs* roar fast up hot tar roads Old mounds sink past our world’s sight Rust belt’s bare malls lift fresh ruins
Notes: *In American slang, a “hog” is a Harley Davidson motorcycle. “Cars” would be more easily understood, but less specific to the experience.
Feet stalk: Deliberately multi-leveled. The feet could be my walking tour. Or the feet could be the ancient Native Americans who built the earthworks. “Stalk” has a feeling of quiet care. Contrast the rash, roaring motorcycles.
Cool path/ hot road. This contrast between cold and hot in lines 1 and 2 is then echoed in lines 3 and 4. Cold sinks, heat rises. Old earthworks erode. New towns rise and become ruins in their turn. Ohio’s smaller cities already decay.
Roads/ruins: I accept assonance in the rhyme positions instead of a moon/spoon/June type rhyme. “Road” and “ruins” have long vowel sounds and a shared initial consonant. This compromise opens more space for words that present the true experience and emphasize the intended theme. Also, assonance is pleasing but more subtle, less of a nursery-rhyme sound. Just my preference.
