footsteps in the morning,
Resounding on the hollow
sidewalk
Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal
And a
nickel's worth of bacon.
"Butch" Weldy
AFTER I got religion and steadied down
They gave me a job in the
canning works,
And every morning I had to fill
The tank in the yard
with gasoline,
That fed the blow-fires in the sheds
To heat the
soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
Carrying
buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring,
The
air grew still and seemed to heave,
And I shot up as the tank exploded,
And down I came with both legs broken,
And my eyes burned
crisp as a couple of eggs.
For someone left a blow--fire going,
And
something sucked the flame in the tank.
The Circuit Judge said
whoever did it
Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so
Old Rhodes'
son didn't have to pay me.
And I sat on the witness stand as blind
As lack the Fiddler, saying over and over,
"l didn't know him at all."
Doctor Meyers
No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
Did more for people in this
town than l.
And all the weak, the halt, the improvident
And those
who could not pay flocked to me.
I was good-hearted, easy Doctor
Meyers.
I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune,
Blest with a
congenial mate, my children raised,
All wedded, doing well in the
world.
And then one night, Minerva, the poetess,
Came to me in her
trouble, crying.
I tried to help her out--she died--
They indicted me,
the newspapers disgraced me,
My wife perished of a broken heart.
And pneumonia finished me.
Mrs. Meyers
HE protested all his life long
The newspapers lied about him
villainously;
That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall,
But only
tried to help her.
Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see
That
even trying to help her, as he called it,
He had broken the law human
and divine.
Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:
If your ways
would be ways of pleasantness,
And all your pathways peace,
Love
God and keep his commandments.
Knowlt Hoheimer
I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt
the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and
joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to
lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal
Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
What do they mean, anyway?
Lydia Puckett
KNOWLT HOHEIMER ran away to the war
The day before Curl
Trenary
Swore out a warrant through Justice Arnett
For stealing
hogs.
But that's not the reason he turned a soldier.
He caught me
running with Lucius Atherton.
We quarreled and I told him never
again
To cross my path.
Then he stole the hogs and went to the
war--
Back of every soldier is a woman.
Frank Drummer
OUT of a cell into this darkened space--
The end at twenty-five!
My tongue could not speak what stirred within me,
And the village
thought me a fool.
Yet at the start there was a clear vision,
A high
and urgent purpose in my soul
Which drove me on trying to
memorize
The Encyclopedia Britannica!
Hare Drummer
Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's
For cider, after school, in late
September?
Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
On Aaron
Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin?
For many times with the
laughing girls and boys
Played I along the road and over the hills
When the sun was low and the air was cool,
Stopping to club the
walnut tree
Standing leafless against a flaming west.
Now, the
smell of the autumn smoke,
And the dropping acorns,
And the
echoes about the vales
Bring dreams of life.
They hover over me.
They question me:
Where are those laughing comrades?
How many
are with me, how many
In the old orchards along the way to Siever's,
And in the woods that overlook
The quiet water?
Doc Hill
I WENT UP and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. Do
you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I
turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to
see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,
And hear
them murmur their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul
trembled, scarcely able
To hold to the railing of the new life
When I
saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,
Hiding herself,
and her grief!
Sarah Brown
MAURICE, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.
The balmy
air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,
The stars sparkle, the
whippoorwill calls,
But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous
In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!
Go to the good heart that is my
husband
Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:--
Tell him
that my love for you, no less than my love for him Wrought out my
destiny-- that through the flesh
I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.
There
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