Lula Pickering - 1887-1906

Lula Pickering 1887 – 1906 Have you seen my bluebirds today? Have you fed them a few crumbs of stale rye bread? I must have taken a hundred walks as a young girl In search of my freewheeling friends. And with only my slender shadow at my side, I recited a million silent invocations to my Lord. I greeted the noon tide on those many happy occasions As if in flight myself. And my only friends, Regaled in flying blazing blue, Flew with me to fantastic heights And I kissed the rising sun a hundred times But received not even a smiling sigh in return. And it was in Black Canyon That I discovered the one true answer to my only question in life. I discovered that love is a clinging cloud That arrives and sometimes lingers. Or it is a cloud that moves on quickly Like a late train to Los Angeles in 1904 Leaving only a faint wisp of windy dust in its wake. Roscoe Settle was that cloud; A cloud at once full of light and rare beauty. A cloud that stood still and refused to wink or budge. But I gave Roscoe Settle my pursed lips And like a silly infatuated fool I gave him the hidden treasure within my bosom. God knows that I pleaded and begged like a panhandling maniac For my handsome boy to stay. To stay forever with me in this town of sensational sunsets And of soaring spiraling bluebirds In search of a lonely jilted girl Who now walks as an ethereal restless ghost Amongst the crosses and stone lilacs of this dead land. Only my parents knew of my untimely demise. Only the sheriff and Mr. White knew that I took my own life. And that I ended my life over Roscoe Settle. I found the old rope in my father’s barn And the last thing I remember Was the quick snap of the rope And of my soft svelte neck As I threw myself, Noosed and sad From my father’s hay loft On a moonless August evening.