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.