Tony Reevy 

Continue along Orange Factory Rd. across the Little River Reservoir, a Durham [N.C.] water supply. Its
construction in the 1980s flooded the village of Orange Factory. Built in 1852 by John H. Webb and John
C. Douglas, the water-powered textile factory was called Orange Factory because it was the first factory in
what was then Orange County. Around it stood a village of the same name with houses for workers, a store,
a school, church, and other mill buildings. – “Driving Tour of the Little River”

The road plunges into a new
lake—where looms once wove
broadcloth. Foundation
lines can be seen when
water is clear,

resurface in periodic
droughts. Church on the hill,
last survivor, steeple calling
to the sky, looms
above gray waters.

Fisherman in a jon boat
trolls. Line snags
on a stump—once a shade tree.
He stops, cusses, spits, cuts
filament, re-rigs, moves on.

 

 

Tony Reevy has more than one hundred publications, including poems in Asheville Poetry Review, Now & Then, Out of Line, Pembroke Magazine, The Kerf, other journals, ten anthologies and four chapbooks: Green Cove Stop, Magdalena, Lightning in Wartime and In Mountain Lion Country. His works also include non-fiction articles, short stories, and two non-fiction books. He is senior associate director of the Institute for the Environment at UNC-Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.