Stirling Annual
-------------------

The dismantling begins.
Paper plates sodden with
brown beans, BBQ sauce
grease -
are stacked, despite 
plastic cutlery and chicken bones
to make
the precarious journey to the trash.

Dinner groups lift from the tables,
disperse and coalesce in pleasant clusters
on the patio.
Conversation lifts and falls, 
swirls in eddies
casting off one member here, 
picking up three more there.

It's called the "Old Timer's Picnic"
and it happens yearly in Stirling City.
I am a visiting stranger
here among old acquaintances.

With shock,
it occurs to me 
the weight of nostalgia,
the commemorative pride possessed here
is first-hand.

I realize,
an elderly woman for whom walking seems 
a miracle,
her bright, sunken eyes
once glanced at this place
and saw a wilderness.

These are the people of discovery,
the first seedling residents,
the first generation of this mountain town.

The tradition they carry out
Is a fleeting, pursuant addition
to the ages-long gathering here
of cedar,
sugar pine
and silverfir.