Elegy: Walking the Line
Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In solstice bloom, all white, most graciously.
On the sunnier slope, the wild plums that my mother
Later would make preserves of, to give to friends
Or sell, in autumn, with the foxgrape, quince,
Elderberry, and muscadine. Around
The granite overhang, moist den of foxes;
Gradually up a long hill, high in pine,
Park-like, years of dry needles on the ground,
And dogwood, slopes the settlers terraced; pine
We cut at Christmas, berries, hollies, anise,
And cones for sale in Mister Haymore’s yard
In town, below the Courthouse Square. James Haymore,
One of the two good teachers at Boys’ High,
Ironic and demanding, chemistry;
Mary Lou Culver taught us English: essays,
Plot summaries, outlines, meters, kinds of clauses
(Noun, adjective, and adverb, five at a time),
Written each day and then revised, and she
Up half the night to read them once again
Through her pince-nez, under a single lamp.
Across the road, on a steeper hill, the settlers
Set a house, unpainted, the porch fallen in,
The road a red clay strip without a bridge,
A shallow stream that liked to overflow.
Oliver Brand’s mules pulled our station wagon
Out of the gluey mire, earth’s rust. Then, here
And there, back from the road, the specimen
Shrubs and small trees my father planted, some
Taller than we were, some in bloom, some berried,
And some we still brought water to. We always
Paused at the weed-filled hole beside the beech
That, one year, brought forth beech nuts by the thousands,
A hole still reminiscent of the man
Chewing tobacco in among his whiskers
My father happened on, who, discovered, told
Of dreaming he should dig there for the gold
And promised to give half of what he found.
During the wars with Germany and Japan,
Descendents of the settlers, of Oliver Brand
And of that man built Flying Fortresses
For Lockheed, in Atlanta; now they build
Brick mansions in the woods they left, with lawns
To paved and lighted streets, azaleas, camellias
Blooming among the pines and tulip trees—
Mercedes Benz and Cadillac Republicans.
There was another stream further along
Divided through a marsh, lined by the fence
We stretched to posts with Mister Garner’s help
The time he needed cash for his son’s bail
And offered all his place. A noble spring
Under the oak root cooled his milk and butter.
He called me “honey,” working with us there
(My father bought three acres as a gift),
His wife pale, hair a country orange, voice
Uncanny, like a ghost’s, through the open door
Behind her, chickens scratching on the floor.
Barred Rocks, our chickens; one, a rooster, splendid
Sliver and grey, red comb and long sharp spurs,
Once chased Aunt Jennie as far as the daphne bed
The two big king snakes were familiars of.
My father’s dog would challenge him sometimes
To laughter and applause. Once, in Stone Mountain,
Travelers, stopped for gas, drove off with Smokey;
Angrily, grievingly, leaving his work, my father
Traced the car and found them way far south,
Had them arrested and, bringing Smokey home,
Was proud as Sherlock Holmes, and happier.
Above the spring, my sister’s cats, black Amy,
Grey Junior, down to meet us. The rose trees,
Domestic, Asiatic, my father’s favorites.
The bridge, marauding dragonflies, the bullfrog,
Camellias cracked and blackened by the freeze,
Bay tree, mimosa, mountain laurel, apple,
Monkey pine twenty feet high, banana shrub,
The owls’ tall pine curved like a flattened S.
The pump house Mort and I built block by block,
Smooth concrete floor, roof pale aluminum
Half-covered by a clematis, the pump
Thirty feet down the mountain’s granite foot.
Mort was the hired man sent to us by Fortune,
Childlike enough to lead us. He brought home,
Although he could not even drive a tractor,
Cheated, a worthless car, which we returned.
When, at the trial to garnishee his wages,
Frank Guess, the judge, Grandmother’s longtime neighbor,
Whose children my mother taught in Cradle Roll,
Heard Mort’s examination, he broke in
As if in disbelief on the bank’s attorneys:
“Gentlemen, must we continue this charade?”
Finally, past the compost heap, the garden,
Tomatoes and sweet corn for succotash,
Okra for frying, Kentucky Wonders, limas,
Cucumbers, squashes, leeks heaped round with soil,
Lavender, dill, parsley, and rosemary,
Tithonia and zinnias between the rows;
The greenhouse by the rock wall, used for cuttings
In late spring, frames to grow them strong for planting
Through winter into summer. Early one morning
Mort called out, lying helpless by the bridge.
His ashes we let drift where the magnolia
We planted as a stem divides the path
The others lie, too young, at Silver Hill,
Except my mother. Ninety-five, she lives
Three thousand miles away, beside the bare
Pacific, in rooms that overlook the Mission,
The Riviera, and the silver range
La Cumbre east. Magnolia grandiflora
And one druidic live oak guard the view.
Proudly around the walls, she shows her paintings
Of twenty years ago: the great oak’s arm
Extended, Zeuslike, straight and strong, wisteria
Tangled among the branches, amaryllis
Around the base; her cat, UC, at ease
In marigolds; the weeping cherry, pink
And white arms like a blessing to the blue
Bird feeder Mort made; cabin, scarlet sweet gum
Superb when tribes migrated north and south.
Alert, still quick of speech, a little blind,
Active, ready for laughter, open to fear,
Pity, and wonder that such things may be,
Some Sundays, I think, she must walk the line,
Aunt Jennie, too, if she were still alive,
And Eleanor, whose story is untold,
Their presences like muses, prompting me
In my small study, all listening to the sea,
All of one mind, the true posterity.
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Edgar Bowers's poem moves as a long act of remembrance, following a literal walk along family land and turning that walk into a map of inherited life. The poem's first half traces the physical boundary of a property-fields, slopes, springs, planted shrubs, outbuildings, roads, and neighbors-while the memory keeps widening to include the people who shaped that place: the speaker's parents, sister, hired workers, teachers, and local families. The voice is intimate but exact, gathering names with the care of someone preserving a world that is already fading.
As the poem progresses, the landscape becomes inseparable from history. The cleared land, the cultivated plants, the creek, the bridge, and the garden are not just details of rural memory; they register generations of labor, class change, wartime industry, and the slow transformation of southern land into modern development. What begins as a family inventory deepens into elegy when death enters the poem directly, especially in the account of Mort and the absent dead. Yet the closing movement refuses simple loss. The mother, still alive at a distance, becomes the final witness, and the speaker imagines the dead and living walking the line together. The poem's central tension lies in that double motion: the past is gone, but it remains vividly, almost stubbornly, present in names, places, and acts of attention.
Theme
- Memory and preservation - The poem tries to hold onto a vanishing world by naming plants, people, and places in exact detail, as if careful recollection could resist disappearance.
- Family inheritance - Land, habits, stories, and values pass through the speaker's family, making the property a record of ancestry as much as a physical space.
- Elegy and loss - Death enters gradually, then unmistakably, and the poem becomes a meditation on who is gone, who remains, and what can still be carried forward.
- Landscape as history - The terrain is never neutral; every slope, stream, fence, and planting bears traces of work, settlement, and change across generations.
- Labor and stewardship - The poem honors the physical effort of clearing, planting, building, and maintaining the land, showing care as a form of responsibility.
- Change and modernity - The old rural world gives way to roads, industry, mansions, and modern markers of class, suggesting continuity mixed with loss and adaptation.
- Community and social bond - Neighbors, teachers, workers, and relatives form a network that gives the speaker's memory moral and emotional depth.
- Posterity and survival - The ending suggests that the dead live on not through monument alone but through the living act of remembering and speaking their names.
Literary Devices
- Cataloging - The poem repeatedly lists trees, flowers, foods, people, and landmarks, creating a sense of abundance while also turning memory into an archive.
- Elegiac narration - The long, flowing movement allows grief to emerge indirectly, so that loss feels woven into the texture of recollection rather than announced at once.
- Imagery - Vivid natural and domestic details make the setting feel physically present, from the spring and bridge to the garden and greenhouse.
- Enjambment - The lines carry thought forward with little pause, mirroring the way one memory leads naturally into another during a walk or reminiscence.
- Parenthetical aside - Brief inserted comments add immediacy and private humor, giving the poem the feeling of a mind remembering in real time.
- Irony - The poem occasionally contrasts plain rural life with social status, bureaucracy, or modern politics, sharpening its view of changing Southern identity.
- Proper names - The many named people and places lend documentary authority while also making the poem feel like a memorial roll call.
- Juxtaposition - Domestic tenderness, labor, death, and modernization are placed side by side, revealing the layered character of a family history.
Symbolism
- The line - The boundary walk symbolizes the speaker's movement through memory, family history, and the limits between past and present.
- The land - The property represents inheritance, labor, and continuity, with every cleared field and planted slope carrying generational meaning.
- Plants and trees - The many cultivated and native species suggest growth, care, fragility, and the layering of human intention onto nature.
- The bridge - The bridge suggests connection across difficulty, especially between different eras, households, and states of being.
- The spring - The spring symbolizes renewal and hidden sustenance, a cool source of life beneath the work of the land.
- The magnolia - The magnolia stands for enduring grace and remembrance, especially where the poem links it to death and dispersal.
- Mort's ashes - The drifting ashes symbolize impermanence, return to the land, and the poem's effort to keep a life present after death.
- The mother's paintings - Her paintings symbolize artistic memory itself, a way of preserving the family world when the original scene has changed.
Tone
Bowers's tone is affectionate, exacting, and quietly reverent, as though every detail must be named before it slips away. The emotional atmosphere for the reader is more complex: the poem feels spacious and nostalgic, but also marked by loss, historical change, and the ache of mortality. Even when it is humorous or lively, the poem carries the subdued gravity of someone looking back across many years and recognizing how much has been altered or buried.
Historical Context
The poem belongs to a long modern tradition of American elegy that combines personal mourning with landscape, memory, and public change. Its attention to domestic labor, local speech, family history, and the transformation of rural property also reflects the broader concerns of twentieth-century Southern writing, where place often becomes a record of social and cultural transition. The poem's detailed rural world, its mixture of affection and irony, and its awareness of postwar modern development place it firmly in that literary conversation.
Its method also recalls the documentary richness of later modernist and postwar poetry, in which ordinary names and material facts are given lasting moral weight. Rather than treating the past as abstract sentiment, the poem preserves it through specific scenes of work, teaching, gardening, building, and burial, linking private memory to the broader history of regional change.
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