The First Settler's Story

This poem is another one in my collections. It is a heartrending and deeply touching story. One that tells how our words affect others. It is very long, but very worth the reading. Our words go flying and once said they cannot be brought back in. But I'll let you go on and read the poem, though I am sure you probably skipped over this already. I am posting it in parts so you don't have to read it all at once. Let me know if you would like to read the whole thing or not. Keep in mind that this is a true story and is told by the man himself of his own experience.

The First Settler's Story

My girl wife was as brave as she was good.
She helped me every blessed way she could.
She seemed to take to every rough old tree,
As singular she first took to me.

She kept our little log house neat as wax,
And once I caught her foolin' with my ax.
She learned a hundred masculine things to do.
She aimed a shot gun pretty middlin' true.

Although in spite of my expressed desire,
She would always shut her eyes before she'd fire.
She hadn't the muscle, though she had the heart,
In outdoor work to take an active part.

When I was logging, burning, chopping wood,
She'd linger round and help me all she could,
And kept me fresh, ambition all the while,
And lifted tons just with her voice and smile.

With no desire my glory for to rob,
She used to stand around and boss the job;
And when first class success my hands befell
Would proudly say we did that pretty well!

She was delicious both to hear and see-
That pretty girl wife that kept house for me.
Sundays we didn't propose for lack o' church
To have our soul's left wholly in the lurch.

So I shaved and dressed up well as I could,
And did a day's work trying to be good.
Well, we would take our books, sit down alone,
And have a two horse meeting all our own.

We would read our verses, sing our sacred rhymes,
And make it seem a good deal like old times.
But finally across her face there'd glide
A sort of sorry shadow from inside.

And once she dropped her head like a tired flower
Upon my arm and cried a half an hour.
I humored her until she had it out,
I didn't ask her what it was about.

I knew right well our reading, song and prayer
Had brought the old times back to true and square.
Well, neighborhoods meant counties in those days,
The roads didn't have accommodating ways.

And maybe weeks would pass before she'd see,
And much less talk, with anyone but me.
Some ideas from the birds and trees she stole,
But twasn't like talking with a human soul.

And finally I thought I could trace
A half heart hunger from her face,
Then she would drive it back and shut the door;
Of course that only made me see it more.

'Twas hard to see her give her life to mine,
Making a stead effort not to pine;
'Twas hard to hear that laugh boom out each minute
And recognize the seeds of sorrow in it.

Well, she kept on as plucky as could be,
Fighting the foe she thought I didn't see,
And using her heart horticultural powers
To turn that forest to a bed of flowers.

You cannot check an unadmitted sigh,
And so I had to sooth her on the sly,
And secretly to help her draw her load
And soon it came to be an uphill road.

Hard work bears hard on the average pulse,
Even with satisfactory results;
But when efforts are scarce, the heavy strain
Falls dead and solid on the heart and brain.

And when we're bothered it will oft occur
We seek blame timber, and I lit on her,
And looked on her with daily lessoning favor
For what I knew she couldn't help to save her.

And so ere long she caught the halfgrown fact,
Commenced observing how I didn't act,
And silently began to grieve and doubt
o'er old attentions now sometimes left out-

Some kind caresses, some little petting ways
Commenced a-staying in on rainy days.
(I did not see so clear then I'll allow
but I can trace it rather accurate now.)

And discord, when once he had called and seen us,
Called round quite often and edged in between us.
One night, when I came home unusual late,
Too hungry and tired to feel first rate.

Her supper struck me wrong (though I'll allow
She didn't have much to strike with anyhow;)
And when I went to milk the cows and found
They had wandered from their usual feeding ground-

And maybe left a few long miles behind them
Which I must occupy if I meant to find them.
Flash quick the stay chains of my temper broke,
And in thrice these hot words I had spoke-

"You'd ought to've kept those animals in view
And drove them in; you'd nothing else to do.
The heft of all our life on me must fall;
You just lie around and let me do it all."

That speech - it hadn't been gone half a minute
Before I saw the cold, black poison in it;
And I'd have given all I had and more
To've only safely got it back in door.

I'm now what most folks "well to do" would call,
I feel today as if I would give it all,
Provided, I thought, fifty years might reach,
Kill and bury that half minute speech.

Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds;
You can't do that when you're flying words.
Things that we think may sometimes fall back dead,
Even God Himself can't kill them once they're said.

-to be continued

by Will Carlton