The Folks Back East Got Your Letter Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

Mary Angela Douglas

Mary Angela Douglas

Little Rock, Arkansas United States of America

The Folks Back East Got Your Letter



to Stephen Crane and so many others

showboater, shilly shally
all I want to say:
the creek is dry;
don't go that way.

the barn's burned down.
the silos just melted.
no one came to the rebuilding parties;
stuffed with their own apples.

golden, the pick axe strays
into the mud; in just one day
well water scooped into our hands

evaporated. how are the children.
say hi to the folks who stayed behind
and don't know the virginia reel.

send orange peel and citron, maybe.
a punch bowl ladle made from cut-glass.
grass seed. if it pleases you to think it grows here.

and sassafras. molasses candies.
an oistritch feather, tissue sewing patterns,
red shoe leather,
down country remedies for someone
sick from greasepaint and the smell of crowds
who don't know where they are
staring straight at it.

send bolts of silk, . fresh underwear.
barrels of cough syrup to us here; to us-
you used to know
where trees were green
and the porch swings swung

in the minted breezes;
the afternoon sun of the
cooling drinks and the lily hands.
send piano strands. glad music.
berry picking.

send prayers on angel wings
before the next snows
to us here, waylaid by
the folkloric maps in the newspapers.
pointing the way.

mary angela douglas 9 june 2014

Note on the Poem: the poem is my imaginary letter sent by pioneers to people they knew back east. Here is how I imagine the reply the folks back home posted by Western Union to the imaginary stranded pioneers: Sell golden axe. you should get something for it.

Of course another problem is the strangeness of the items requested by the sender who may be equally affected by sun stroke or sarcasm, depending on previous experience with asking for help. Or delusional. The golden axe
is out of place here, like those pictures where you are instructed to find something aberrational.

A problem within a problem. A person sent on a quest with the wrong information and, as a subset of that confusion is his own propensity for fairy tales, over and above the newspaper accounts. Or. a means of survival.

The telegram reply (sell the golden axe) indicates the folks back home were literal. Which may be why the pioneer left home in the first place, being of a different disposition.

One true fact in the poem: many American pioneers in the
latter part of the 19th century were misled by maps and
glowing reports (possibly entirely fabricated to sell more copy) by Eastern newspapers. Their maps showed water where there was no water, mountain passes where no one could get through. And that was the least of it.

Stephen Crane is the American poet from a slightly later period of American history, who having worked for newspapers himself and seen the worst of it, wrote a very short poem on the subject (not complimentary) . This goes with the theme of the poem. It is not what I generally think of newspapers myself. Many have uncovered truth.(but not for the pioneers!) .

Everything was not like Little House on the Prairie. It still isn't. The neighbors do not always show up to 'raise' the new barn. God bless the ones who do.

Saturday, August 30, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: Survival
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Mary Angela Douglas

Mary Angela Douglas

Little Rock, Arkansas United States of America
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