Stark Hunter Poet Epitaph

Notes About The Poem

From the book: Voices from Clark Cemetery

Amanda Thing 1829-1918

Amanda Thing

1829 - 1918

BF and me
We rode into this muddy enclave,
This Quaker paradise high on an ever-descending hill
In March of ‘87
With Sunshine, our roan mare,
And a wagon full of old belongings and new hopes.
I recall the mustard fields blooming that spring  
Like a million fires in the firmament,
And these fiery fields were intensely difficult to plow.
And the land had to be carved up like slaughtered meat
To pave the way for the railroad 
And the first automobiles from Detroit.
First time I saw one,
I almost fainted.
BF and me
We spent many an afternoon in our feathered buggy instead
With Sunshine, our roan mare,
Riding the newly paved roads,
From Rideout’s Driveway to County Road.
And we saw, 
From the top of Friends Street
The distant Catalina Island,
Shrouded in the hazy Pacific,
Like a sleeping giant under a brown blanket,
And we gasped at the mystical beauty of it
From our hilltop perch.
When BF died of a stroke in ’07,
I buried him in Clark Cemetery
And I thought I would never survive the grief.
But God sustained me as always 
And I lived eleven more years by myself,
Among the roses and tulips
Of my Whittier Avenue cottage.
At 89 I died an old and tired lady,
More than ready to meet my sweet Savior. 
My funeral was grand indeed!
They put baby roses on my casket,
And said the Lord’s Prayer.
Then they put me next to BF.

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