Poem: "The Hobbomak"
This poem came out of the March 2, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from Dreamwidth users Kengr, Readera, Wyld_dandelyon, Ng_moonmoth, and Anonymous. It also fills the "Forsythia - Anticipation" square in my 2-1-21 "The Language of Flowers" card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem introduces a new series, The Bear Tunnels.
This microfunded poem is being posted one verse at a time, as donations come in to cover them. The rate is $1/line, so $5 will reveal 5 new lines, and so forth. There is a permanent donation button on my profile page, or you can contact me for other arrangements. You can also ask me about the number of lines per verse, if you want to fund a certain number of verses.
So far sponsors include: ng_moonmoth, LJ user Erulisse, general fund, Anthony & Shirley Barrette
FULLY FUNDED
267 lines, Buy It Now = $267
Amount donated = $145
Verses posted = 37 of 68
Amount remaining to fund fully = $122
Amount needed to fund next verse = $3
Amount needed to fund the verse after that = $2
The Hobbomak
[March 2019]
Emma Little Doe
and Jesse Harris had
gotten a grant to study
precolonial structures in
western Massachusetts.
They had high hopes for
exploring the hobbomaks
around Berkshire County,
which had low population
and a lot of forests, so it
was less disturbed than
the rest of the state.
Emma was a linguist
and anthropologist with
an interest in preserving
tribal cultures and languages.
Jesse was a historical archaeologist
with a background in anthropology
and a particular focus on aspects
of slavery and oppression that
spanned Native American
and African cultures.
Both of them enjoyed
the great outdoors
and learning more
about their ancestors.
The less-trampled parts
of Massachusetts were
littered with the remnants
of precolonial structures like
stone circles, standing stones,
mounds and chambers made
out of earth and stone.
The anticipation of
discoveries excited
Emma and Jesse.
They had just started
brushing away the dirt
from what might be
a hobbomak when
something shifted
under Emma's hand.
"Did you feel something
move?" she asked Jesse.
Then the ground vanished.
They fell just far enough
to knock the wind out of them.
It was dark and the ground
underneath them was hard.
Then the lights came on,
slowly, almost organically,
little dots growing and
spreading until Emma
could see in the gloom.
"This should not be here,"
Jesse said. "It's too big."
"It's buried," Emma said.
"If we hadn't fallen in, we
wouldn't have found it either."
"Fallen in," Jesse echoed,
looking around. "From where?"
They looked up, but the ceiling
seemed completely solid.
Emma pulled a flashlight
out of her fanny pack
and turned it upwards.
"I don't see a hole
anywhere," she said.
"This is not good,"
Jesse muttered.
"Well ... let's search
the walls," Emma said.
"Maybe we can find
a way to climb up --
there has to be a hole,
just covered somehow."
"We might even find
another way out,"
Jesse said. "Okay,
let's look around."
It didn't take long
for them to realize
that the chamber
was a lot weirder
than it should be.
"This is metal,"
Emma said, wiping
dirt off a flat wall.
"It joins to the stone."
"Yeah, I got one here,
too," said Jesse. "But
that's not the oddest part.
The lights aren't mushrooms
or anything else organic.
They're like LEDs, I think."
"Oh, great," Emma grumbled.
"We've fallen into a shelter
built by survival nuts. We'd
better get out of here soon --
some of them are trigger-happy."
"I don't think so," Jesse said.
"Look at the symbols across
the stone wall here. I don't
see any English, or any other
language that I recognize.
It's all old pictographs."
"Show me," Emma said.
"My wall doesn't have any."
Jesse showed her, and
sure enough, that wall
was covered in symbols --
some of them familiar.
"I can almost read this,"
Emma said, tracing a line.
"What does it say?"
Jesse wondered.
"Symbols aren't
really my forte."
"This part here is
an old Niantic design
depicting a strawberry trail,"
Emma said. "It shows
a good way to travel."
"What are all the dots?"
Jesse asked, pointing.
"For Wampanoag women,
dots usually symbolize
individuals -- you see
that in a lot of our art,"
Emma said. "People
following a pathway."
"This stuff off to the side
looks like trees," Jesse said.
"They are trees," said Emma.
"These seedlings stand for
new life, these are adult trees,
and these have fallen down.
It's an old growth forest, with
trees dying and then new ones
growing up -- death and rebirth,
or maybe the passage of time."
"How much time?" Jesse said,
looking at the long span of trees.
"A long time," Emma said. "Centuries,
or millennia. If this was a count, like
a moon count, it could be lives-of-trees,
but I don't know exactly how long."
"We could look it up," Jesse said.
"Well, let's see ... this looks like
Northern Red Oak," Emma said.
These are Bitternut Hickory."
She took some pictures.
"There's a space here,
not far from where the path
starts," Jesse pointed out.
"Medallions stand for
tribal identity, and
the empty space in
the center is for Spirit,"
Emma explained.
"It almost looks like
a door or something,
the way it's angled
like that," Jesse said.
"Could be," Emma said.
"Toward the far end, there's
a bear digging beside the path."
"Bear is the animal that actually
showed us which plants were
medicine and which plants weren't,"
Jesse said. "So that could mean
a helper of some kind, close
to the end of the journey."
"It makes sense," Emma said.
"Bears stand for spirit aid."
"These domes I recognize --
they're wigwams, a village,"
Jesse said. "I've seen
the symbol at powwows."
"There's another here,"
Emma said, walking along
the wall. "These arrows
stand for war, or danger."
"The curls under the trees
go from the arrow village to
the one with this big tree,"
Jesse said. "So maybe
it reads in this direction?"
"Yeah, probably," Emma said.
"The curls can mean healing,
or just plants in general. I think
that's a sacred tree in the village."
"Okay, so put it all together ... it's
a story about people moving from
one village to another?" Jesse said.
"That could be a great find, if it
weren't for all the metal and lights
messing up the dating sequence."
"It's an escape route," Emma murmured.
"The village was attacked, or in danger.
People followed the life path to a door
or passage of some sort. It took them
a long time to travel, but they found
healing, and then a new home."
"What, like the Underground Railroad?"
Jesse said, perking up. "Literally
underground in this case." He
scouted around vigorously, but
found nothing from his other culture.
"No luck?" Emma said sympathetically.
"Not a scrap," said Jesse. "I guess
either this happened before the Africans
arrived, or whoever made it didn't care
about slaves. Or it's a hoax, of course."
"If it's a hoax, it's a pretty old one,"
Emma said. "Look how much dirt
has settled on the walls and the floor.
There are old tree roots in the cracks.
Nobody's been down here in decades,
maybe even a lot longer than that."
"That's ... funny," said Jesse. "Some
of this stuff looks pretty modern,
like the lights, but LEDs haven't
actually been in use all that long."
"This place still reminds me of
a shelter, but the bomb scares
were in the fifties and sixties,"
Emma said. "That's about
the most recent I think this
could be, and it may be older."
"Maybe it's both," Jesse reasoned.
"It wouldn't be the first time that folks
stumbled across something old and
remade it into what they needed then."
"Now there's an idea," Emma said,
looking at the place with new eyes.
"Let's find a way out of here and
do some research, then come back."
It took a good twenty minutes for them
to find the little ladder of handholds
tucked into the rough stone wall.
They climbed up, groping at
the ceiling in search of a hole --
and suddenly there it was.
Emma looked down at
the circle of sunlight
now clearly visible
on the floor below.
"Well, that's weird,"
she said as she climbed
out and helped Jesse
through behind her.
When they turned around,
the hole had closed itself, now
looking like barely-disturbed dirt
in the center of the hobbomak.
"That is extremely strange,"
Jesse said. "It's like
a hidden entrance."
"So tag the GPS, then
throw some leaves over it,"
Emma said. "That way,
we won't have to worry
about anyone else finding
the place and messing up
our study site even worse."
They tagged it and went home.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is long, so its character, setting, and content notes appear separately.
This microfunded poem is being posted one verse at a time, as donations come in to cover them. The rate is $1/line, so $5 will reveal 5 new lines, and so forth. There is a permanent donation button on my profile page, or you can contact me for other arrangements. You can also ask me about the number of lines per verse, if you want to fund a certain number of verses.
So far sponsors include: ng_moonmoth, LJ user Erulisse, general fund, Anthony & Shirley Barrette
FULLY FUNDED
267 lines, Buy It Now = $267
Amount donated = $145
Verses posted = 37 of 68
Amount remaining to fund fully = $122
Amount needed to fund next verse = $3
Amount needed to fund the verse after that = $2
The Hobbomak
[March 2019]
Emma Little Doe
and Jesse Harris had
gotten a grant to study
precolonial structures in
western Massachusetts.
They had high hopes for
exploring the hobbomaks
around Berkshire County,
which had low population
and a lot of forests, so it
was less disturbed than
the rest of the state.
Emma was a linguist
and anthropologist with
an interest in preserving
tribal cultures and languages.
Jesse was a historical archaeologist
with a background in anthropology
and a particular focus on aspects
of slavery and oppression that
spanned Native American
and African cultures.
Both of them enjoyed
the great outdoors
and learning more
about their ancestors.
The less-trampled parts
of Massachusetts were
littered with the remnants
of precolonial structures like
stone circles, standing stones,
mounds and chambers made
out of earth and stone.
The anticipation of
discoveries excited
Emma and Jesse.
They had just started
brushing away the dirt
from what might be
a hobbomak when
something shifted
under Emma's hand.
"Did you feel something
move?" she asked Jesse.
Then the ground vanished.
They fell just far enough
to knock the wind out of them.
It was dark and the ground
underneath them was hard.
Then the lights came on,
slowly, almost organically,
little dots growing and
spreading until Emma
could see in the gloom.
"This should not be here,"
Jesse said. "It's too big."
"It's buried," Emma said.
"If we hadn't fallen in, we
wouldn't have found it either."
"Fallen in," Jesse echoed,
looking around. "From where?"
They looked up, but the ceiling
seemed completely solid.
Emma pulled a flashlight
out of her fanny pack
and turned it upwards.
"I don't see a hole
anywhere," she said.
"This is not good,"
Jesse muttered.
"Well ... let's search
the walls," Emma said.
"Maybe we can find
a way to climb up --
there has to be a hole,
just covered somehow."
"We might even find
another way out,"
Jesse said. "Okay,
let's look around."
It didn't take long
for them to realize
that the chamber
was a lot weirder
than it should be.
"This is metal,"
Emma said, wiping
dirt off a flat wall.
"It joins to the stone."
"Yeah, I got one here,
too," said Jesse. "But
that's not the oddest part.
The lights aren't mushrooms
or anything else organic.
They're like LEDs, I think."
"Oh, great," Emma grumbled.
"We've fallen into a shelter
built by survival nuts. We'd
better get out of here soon --
some of them are trigger-happy."
"I don't think so," Jesse said.
"Look at the symbols across
the stone wall here. I don't
see any English, or any other
language that I recognize.
It's all old pictographs."
"Show me," Emma said.
"My wall doesn't have any."
Jesse showed her, and
sure enough, that wall
was covered in symbols --
some of them familiar.
"I can almost read this,"
Emma said, tracing a line.
"What does it say?"
Jesse wondered.
"Symbols aren't
really my forte."
"This part here is
an old Niantic design
depicting a strawberry trail,"
Emma said. "It shows
a good way to travel."
"What are all the dots?"
Jesse asked, pointing.
"For Wampanoag women,
dots usually symbolize
individuals -- you see
that in a lot of our art,"
Emma said. "People
following a pathway."
"This stuff off to the side
looks like trees," Jesse said.
"They are trees," said Emma.
"These seedlings stand for
new life, these are adult trees,
and these have fallen down.
It's an old growth forest, with
trees dying and then new ones
growing up -- death and rebirth,
or maybe the passage of time."
"How much time?" Jesse said,
looking at the long span of trees.
"A long time," Emma said. "Centuries,
or millennia. If this was a count, like
a moon count, it could be lives-of-trees,
but I don't know exactly how long."
"We could look it up," Jesse said.
"Well, let's see ... this looks like
Northern Red Oak," Emma said.
These are Bitternut Hickory."
She took some pictures.
"There's a space here,
not far from where the path
starts," Jesse pointed out.
"Medallions stand for
tribal identity, and
the empty space in
the center is for Spirit,"
Emma explained.
"It almost looks like
a door or something,
the way it's angled
like that," Jesse said.
"Could be," Emma said.
"Toward the far end, there's
a bear digging beside the path."
"Bear is the animal that actually
showed us which plants were
medicine and which plants weren't,"
Jesse said. "So that could mean
a helper of some kind, close
to the end of the journey."
"It makes sense," Emma said.
"Bears stand for spirit aid."
"These domes I recognize --
they're wigwams, a village,"
Jesse said. "I've seen
the symbol at powwows."
"There's another here,"
Emma said, walking along
the wall. "These arrows
stand for war, or danger."
"The curls under the trees
go from the arrow village to
the one with this big tree,"
Jesse said. "So maybe
it reads in this direction?"
"Yeah, probably," Emma said.
"The curls can mean healing,
or just plants in general. I think
that's a sacred tree in the village."
"Okay, so put it all together ... it's
a story about people moving from
one village to another?" Jesse said.
"That could be a great find, if it
weren't for all the metal and lights
messing up the dating sequence."
"It's an escape route," Emma murmured.
"The village was attacked, or in danger.
People followed the life path to a door
or passage of some sort. It took them
a long time to travel, but they found
healing, and then a new home."
"What, like the Underground Railroad?"
Jesse said, perking up. "Literally
underground in this case." He
scouted around vigorously, but
found nothing from his other culture.
"No luck?" Emma said sympathetically.
"Not a scrap," said Jesse. "I guess
either this happened before the Africans
arrived, or whoever made it didn't care
about slaves. Or it's a hoax, of course."
"If it's a hoax, it's a pretty old one,"
Emma said. "Look how much dirt
has settled on the walls and the floor.
There are old tree roots in the cracks.
Nobody's been down here in decades,
maybe even a lot longer than that."
"That's ... funny," said Jesse. "Some
of this stuff looks pretty modern,
like the lights, but LEDs haven't
actually been in use all that long."
"This place still reminds me of
a shelter, but the bomb scares
were in the fifties and sixties,"
Emma said. "That's about
the most recent I think this
could be, and it may be older."
"Maybe it's both," Jesse reasoned.
"It wouldn't be the first time that folks
stumbled across something old and
remade it into what they needed then."
"Now there's an idea," Emma said,
looking at the place with new eyes.
"Let's find a way out of here and
do some research, then come back."
It took a good twenty minutes for them
to find the little ladder of handholds
tucked into the rough stone wall.
They climbed up, groping at
the ceiling in search of a hole --
and suddenly there it was.
Emma looked down at
the circle of sunlight
now clearly visible
on the floor below.
"Well, that's weird,"
she said as she climbed
out and helped Jesse
through behind her.
When they turned around,
the hole had closed itself, now
looking like barely-disturbed dirt
in the center of the hobbomak.
"That is extremely strange,"
Jesse said. "It's like
a hidden entrance."
"So tag the GPS, then
throw some leaves over it,"
Emma said. "That way,
we won't have to worry
about anyone else finding
the place and messing up
our study site even worse."
They tagged it and went home.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is long, so its character, setting, and content notes appear separately.