Conestoga Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to Bess Streeter Aldrich, author of A Lantern In Her hand
(on the settling of Nebraska) ]

on land they must have seemed like huge white ships
sailing the prairies and the mother with child
sickened by the endless dipping of the prairie grasses

or else the wagon was a plough through fields
as yet unsown a drifting plough from home to
home they clung to like a dream just only on

the way and loaded with the sacks of grain or more,
the flour, the beans and tools perhaps the rose bush
wrapped to plant again beside the small sod house...

much later the stands of poplars, even the lanes.

they would find much later the easiest part
had always been sailing.keeping the children fed
on what could be:

the hardest part lay ahead.

mary angela douglas 29 april 2015