Norwich Rising
Norwich, Vermont
The first settlers
in their log-hewn huts
ducking the winter of ‘65
were flour,
strained by hard life in the woods,
sifted through the sieve
of generations past,
their severe stares posing
stiffly in black and white,
silent on the rough stone mantle.
All-purpose flour they were,
mixing with the rain,
the snow, long swaths of grey sky,
the Ompompanoosuc river,
forming such a sticky stretch of promise,
salted with the courage of furrowed eyes
grown used to staring down the dark
with nothing but clenched fists
and a hard-beating heart.
A town remains a lump in a bowl
until loves drenches the whole of it,
until the yeast of sacrifice seeps into the round table,
a willingness to slice life up for life,
as Sir Gawain chooses Lady Ragnell,
in choosing honor chooses well,
a riddle answered, the riddle applied,
and follows the best of all surprises,
Norwich rises like a pregnant belly–
something deep within her pushing
outward toward the audience of stars;
Norwich, ready for the oven’s fire,
as many times as time would ask
in order to become flesh and blood,
to move beyond Ma Walker’s vigil
haunting the halls of Norwich Inn
into the joy of brick and mortar,
a name place with legends of her own to spin,
where hand-made telescopes dare unclothe
the sneak of the moon across the sky,
where Merlin’s magic is finally exposed
behind the glass in delectible rows
of perfect pastries side by side,
where the fruit lies content in its bedded pie,
the smell of fresh bread casting its spell
on the unsuspecting passerby.
NOTES:
1. The first settlers reached the area in 1763 and began to clear the wilderness and erect the first hand-hewn log buildings, wintering over for the first time in 1765.
2. The King Arthur Baking Company was established in 1790 and headquarters in Norwich. World-famous for their flour products, King Arthur hosts a destination bakery in Norwich and baking schools in Norwich and in Skagit County, Wa. They are an employee-owned company who take seriously their mission to inspire connections and community through baking. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/
3. The tale of Sir Gawain and Lady Ragnell is a delightful read. Wikipedia gives this helpful overview: The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle (The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell) is a 15th-century English poem, one of several versions of the "loathly lady" story popular during the Middle Ages. An earlier version of the story appears as "The Wyfe of Bayths Tale" ("The Wife of Bath's Tale") in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and the later ballad "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is essentially a retelling, though its relationship to the medieval poem is uncertain.The author's name is not known, but similarities to Le Morte d'Arthur have led to the suggestion that the poem may have been written by Sir Thomas Malory.
4. Norwich has a public giant outdoor clay wood-fire pizza oven that was recently rebuilt as a community project, led by Richard Miscovich, author of From the Wood-Fired Oven and sponsored by King Arthur Baking Company. See the story at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pGuq3OfKec.
5. There is a persistent town legend that Norwich Inn is haunted by the ghost of Ma Walker, the owner of the inn in the “roaring twenties.”
6. Telescopes of Vermont: Norwich residents father and son Fred and Russ Schleipman have recreated the Porter Garden telescope first developed in 1920 by Russell Porter, the father of amateur astronomy. Their meticulous copy of the original with updated optical instruments has resulted in a limited production of 200 telescopes at $125,000 each. Learn more at http://gardentelescopes.com/index.html.