The Stay at Home
Byron Herbert Reece wrote poetry with dirt on his hands and he worked in the dirt with words rambling through his head. His love for the land cannot be understood by those who occupy a piece of real estate until the value rises, but is more than understood by families that hold tenaciously and gratefully to land passed along from one generation to another. The farm on which Reece worked rooted him to a place and it also was the muse that stirred his creativity. The titles "farmer and writer" speak of the identity of his soul. The two were indispensable in his life
One of Reece's better known poems, "The Stay at Home," speaks of his attachment to the farm on which he was born and spent the years of his life. The first stanza of the poem says,
"The fields of Hughly held him,
The land where he was born
With fences to mend and cows to tend
And care of wheat and corn
He had no lief to wander
Beyond his place of birth,
But often he would ponder
The luring lands of earth."
On those occasions when he wandered to other places, there was something within him which pulled him back with the drawing power of a magnet. He was a farmer who could not leave his land untended and he was a writer whose words came forth to that page from the freshly plowed dirt, the running waters, and "a valley green with corn."
The generations that came after Byron Herbert Reece were wanderers. Instead of knowing the value of staying at home, living within inter-generational families, and earning a living by the sweat of the brow, those that came after were diminished by a growing disconnect from the land and the creation. Reece's poems have a way of drawing our spirits back to a place where they can once again be nurtured by the smell of the earth.
-By Bill Strickland
This post originally appeared in the “Remembering Reece” column published in the North Georgia News and Towns County Herald, Spring 2024.
