An Open Letter To Ethan Allen Poem by david lessard

Damn, you wouldn't believe all the changes today Ethan. Since your departure, there's been a lot of water under the bridge.
Your old, home state, Vermont, hasn't changed a great deal, at least not her natural beauty or the native Vermonter.
There's been a few monuments built with you in mind.. One's in Bennington, at the site of the old Catamount Tavern, where you and your Green Mounatin Boys were known to tilt a few mugs of rum. It's a penile-looking thing, jutting up 300 feet into the air. They call it the Bennington Battle Monument.There's also a statue of you (in marble, I believe) , at the steps of the state capital in Montepelier. You look rather dashing...sword in hand, raised up...ready to do injury. I can envision that's what you may have looked like when you surprised the British at Fort Ticondergoa, way back when, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
Why Montepelier is the capital and not Bennington, is beyond me. I think it has something to do with geography. Over in New York...Whoops! Didn't mean to mention that name. I remember how you felt about them Yorkers.They still infiltrate here, Ethan, buying up land, along with the New Jersey crowd and even some foreigners. Japan has an interest in this land too. Can you believe that! ?

At one time, cows outnumbered people here. I regret to say that those days are gone. It's still a small population though, not like Florida or Arizona, which you may be unaware of totally, but that's where the growth is Ethan. Weather has a lot to do with it. Nobody likes the rigors of a New England winter anymore. They'd just as soon fry their brains out in the desert!
Go figure.
You've missed out of a bunch of stuff, Ethan...atuomobiles, planes, trains and space shuttles.
More about that in my next letter.
As ever, your boyhood friend, Dave.