Friday, May 4, 2012

Johnstown PA Flood - Poem: One of Our Own

For our library book discussion group we read the excellent Johnstown Flood by David McCullough. It was the first of many wonderful books he wrote, the newest being Americans in Paris.

The man is 81 and still uses a manual Royal typewriter, according to a wonderful interview in the Paris Review. I've added the Paris Review to my blogroll on the right.

So, I'm sitting on my comfy couch reading the book - I'm only halfway through - and I come to a very moving part about one of the 2209 victims.

I've got to write a poem about this, I said, putting down the book and copying the descriptive details. The title came quickly to me, but it sounded familiar. When I goggled it, I learned it was the title of a Willa Cather book we had read in the same book club.
 After I complete this blog, gotta take my Acer laptop to get repaired. When getting my brakes repaired thother day I found a computer-fixin store.

ExpenSIVE!!!


ONE OF OUR OWN

In memory of one of the 2,209 victims of the Johnstown, PA, Flood of 1889

From the archives:

Never identified:

Unknown.
Male.
Age five years.
Sandy hair. Checkered waist.
Ribbed kneepants. Red undershirt. Black stockings
darned in both heels.


Son, I claim you as my own.
I memorialize you as I did my own Danny Paul
lost forever
to the throne of
time.           

You forever five.
Ah, ruddy cheeked lad who
loved to run
raced your sister to the
apple orchards uptown
brought home apples and lilacs
to mama who kissed her
little one
smelling of sweat and salamanders.

You liked those picture books
we read in my lap.
Turning the pages of
railroad trains
gray smoke puffing off the page
- how we coughed and coughed!
Saw, too, the coursing rivers
and sandy shores
dotted with dandelions and
moo-cows so like our own proud
Conemaugh up the hill some.

Four days of endless gray rain.
I kissed your tears when you asked
when will it stop, Mama?
In God’s good time, boy,
in God’s good time.

God’s miracle was
we three
were swept away together
only for a second did we see
the Humpty Dumpty
Wall of Water
but it seemed like a
month of Sundays
our heads a’tilt
trumpets blasting
the Lord’s majesty of
Niagara come
smashing down
pitiless on
my namesless children
with nary a tombstone.

Bless their laughter
Bless their song
rising before dawn
to draw sweet water
from the well
forever young
forever ours.    










2 comments:

  1. Superlative! Tells a sad but great story in a touching, real way and reaches the reader's heart. This needs to be published somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Somehow, I saw me, and mom... glad I survived.

    An other poem that makes me wonder why you are not famous...

    ReplyDelete