I've been looking through old notebooks and found this poem I'd forgotten about in a notebook from 1989. I traveled to Virginia and North Carolina for a conference and to interview a folklorist that I know. I stayed at my brother's house in Farmville, Virginia, where he and wife were college teachers. I was surprised to learn about the communitarian Moravians around what is now Winston-Salem, N.C. The snark may be a bit too much here, but sometimes you can't leave it on the field.
Don’t Tell Jesse Helms
A hummingbird sucks red syrup from a tube at a brick bungalow
Where I’m hearing one of the region’s foundation stories.
Mud-green ceramic catfish decorate an heirloom sideboard.
On the Salem side of a Carolina city branded by tobacco,
There’s an old part settled by Moravians, neighbors of the Bohemians,
United Brethren who favored a ritual “lovefeast” of sweet buns and wine.
The German Protestants who walked south from Pennsylvania
Made a church community whose history museum today
Says those early Americans believed in radical sharing:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
—Paul Marion (c) 1989, 2016