Notes About The Poem
Poem 58
From the anthology Voices From Mt Olive Cemetery, a work in progress.
John Moore 1843-1933
John Moore
1843-1933
I was born with my lungs full of tarnation.
Leastways that was my mother’s version of it.
I do not believe anyone who was ever born,
Came Into this world kicking,
Leastways not like me;
I tumbled in, kicking like some drifting no account sodbuster,
Ready for the new plough, and the hedge maul.
I grew up in a working family;
My paw farmed our land with maw darning our lives together.
I grew up fast in this torrid sun, working and learning.
With sun-burned hands and forehead,
I scraped a living together, best I could,
And planted the seeds of a thousand children!
But with each passing shivering winter,
Even here in these sunny digs called Whittierville,
I hated the galloping return of the pale horse;
The dreaded infections of the lungs and nose;
Terrible suffering has taken place here, my friends,
Entire families were wiped out in a week,
Slain by a monster with no body!
Leastways that was my mother’s version of it.
This old gravelly graveyard here was busy in 1918;
Last stop for so many friends who died in a dark sick room,
Astonished, I might say, that it was their time to die;
I reckon Mt. Olive, in its greedier times of soft earth,
Has seen half a dozen funerals in a single day.
Leastways that’s what I hear tell,
Coming from Artilissa Dorland Clark herself!
Those were scary times, and the years were dark.
I do not believe anyone who has ever died,
Left this world kicking,
Leastways, not like me… last thing I remember,
I reached up to the ceiling in my sick bed,
And cursed my damned lungs!
For once again, as if by intelligent design,
They were full of tarnation.
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