Willow Was A Widow Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Willow was a widow, who lived up on the hill,
above Little River, beside the water mill.
She lived in a cabin in Townsend, Tennessee,
bound to the forest with her spirit running free.

She traveled from Clark County to live in Cade's Cove,
where trust in God, hard work, and dreams were interwove.
Emboldened by his faith, each hopeful pioneer
labored from dawn till dusk to settle the frontier.

They worked the land and worshipped, wakened to new life -
each wife for her children; each husband for his wife.
Willow was the mother of children counting ten.
She loved with all her heart one man among all men.

He was John Oliver, a collier by trade.
He hewed their home from timbers that he cut and laid.
They arrived in the fall, past the planting season,
and nearly starved to death for this very reason.

For, John wasn't a farmer as was wont to be.
They survived thanks to food from the feared Cherokee;
and by the grace of God, they survived winter's snare
and learned to farm the land of red fox and black bear.

The soil proved fertile and the crops began to grow.
The harvest would sustain them through next winter's snow.
The vegetables and wheat, pumpkins, corn, oats, and rye
grew in abundance beneath Smoky Mountain High.

Settlers and bluecoats, by government decree,
stole land that belonged to the native Cherokee.
The Indians were forced to walk a Trail of Tears,
a thousand miles of ghostly cries that no one hears.

1838, Old Man Winter reared his head,
struck them down in their prime and left four thousand dead.
As sunrise peered over the Smoky Mountain peak,
the rose of life faded in the pale of each cheek.

What savage man is this who took another's land,
who robbed the last crumb of bread from a starving hand,
who suffered the children to walk barefoot in snow,
denying them the warmth of a cheerful firelight glow?

My lips dare not say for they do not wish to tell.
The color of this man is one that I know well.
While I share in his skin, I do not share his heart.
His crimes were a sin, and they tore this land apart.

All must account for the sins he's perpetrated,
for those he has hurt, and for those he has hated.
The willow's weeping lashes whisper in the wind
that life has a beginning and life has an end.

John died from pneumonia in 1864.
Lessons learned made him a wiser man than before.
Twenty-four years she mourned him, lonely and alone,
daily tracing footsteps to weep at his gravestone.

1888, at the age of ninety-three,
she died in her sleep in Cade's Cove in Tennessee.
On her bedside table, beside the little vase,
lay the faded tintype of John Oliver's face.

She lay as though dreaming in her flannel nightgown.
In her hands was a Bible, opened upside-down.
Psalm 23 - She had defeated sorrow's sword.
God rest her soul! She dwells in the house of the Lord.

Willow is half sleeping beneath the canopy
that weeps beside the river, hanging gracefully.
She looks up to the hill, where once in time she stood,
remembering the past and knows that it was good.

(One little footnote for the sake of history …
remember the land stolen from the Cherokee?
Well, Congress stole it back through eminent domain.
The Great Smoky Mountains are all that yet remain.)