The Ghosts of Sherwood

Chip Dameron

March 24, 2024

Not the ancient royal forest

of fabled Nottinghamshire

but the first county seat

of Irion County, 28 miles

southwest of San Angelo,

now unincorporated, now

for all intents and purposes

a West Texas ghost town.

Once a bustling hamlet

and birthplace of my father,

my grandmother, and home

to her pioneering parents,

sheepman Jeff Mills and wife 

Ida, birth mother of twelve.

When Big Lake’s oil boom hit,

Dad’s family headed west.

Sherwood began its decline

in the early 1900s when

the railroad bypassed town

by two miles and made

Mertzon its next destination.

Today Sherwood’s courthouse

still stands, but not much else

for the few folks around.

Several miles north, nearly 

700 people lie at rest,

their gravestones dotting

the Sherwood Cemetery.

Just inside the entrance

sits a windmill, its creak

a product of the dry breeze

that scours the landscape.

Perhaps at night the ghosts 

of Jeff and Ida, along with

other Millses and Damerons,

wander over to Spring Creek

or down to the courthouse,

revisiting the past or looking

for the ones who departed

and have never come back.

Chip Dameron’s most recent book is Relatively Speaking: Poems of Person and Place, which combines a collection of his poems with a collection by poet Betsy Joseph. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a former Dobie Paisano Fellow.