Best Whittier Poems
As we age we regret words of anger and spite
That were heard and remembered and can't be unsaid.
The remarks we thought clever or proved we were right
That resulted in losses of friendships instead.
All the heartbreaks that came from suspicion and doubt,
The betrayals and hurts we refuse to forgive,
The companions and love that our pride has cast out,
And the chances we missed that we'd like to relive.
All the pathways not taken and bridges uncrossed,
All the times had we acted, a difference made,
The potential delights that timidity lost,
And the kindness and debts that we never repaid.
All the secret dishonors we long to forget,
And the wrongs we inflicted in order to win.
For the strongest of sorrows are those of regret,
And the saddest remembrance is what might have been.
* * * * *
Or as Whittier phrased it, far finer and first:
"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: It might have been"
"For all sad words of tongue and pen,
the saddest are these, 'It might have been'."
~ John Greenleaf Whittier ~
I knew that someday you would break my heart
we loved too fast and much too strong
the pages of our story were being torn apart
as foreshadowing moments began to unfold
yet we clung to our dreams of tomorrow
hoping for us, the best was yet to come
I loved waking beside you in the glow of dawn
then gently falling into your welcoming arms
For just a little while the world was beautiful
but there were signs, I was not the one for you
Too soon our tomorrow filled with sorrow
I knew for us, the worst was yet to come
Signs were clear that what we once held dear
no longer mattered to you. With vows forsaken
your path was taken, leading you away from me
My grief was overwhelming but you remained aloof
turned your back, walked away and left me crying
I knew this day of reckoning had finally come
We turned our backs on what might have been
cherished dreams haunted by lengthening shadows
that were swept away into the depths of the sea
of animosity where love is never meant to dwell
My wearied heart grew numb; a withered leaf
falling in Autumn. For us the best will never come
~~~~~~~~~~
April 20th, 2017
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these ‘it might have been’—John Greenleaf Whittier
without deep regret
apologetic parrot ~
squawks m
i n d racked a
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William Harrison Hardy
1823 - 1906
I believe a fair introduction is in order here.
Not that a handshake from me could ever take place anytime soon.
I was Captain Bill Hardy:
Proud Indian fighter!
And celebrated toll road builder!
I was the one who built the big road
From San Bernardino to Prescott Arizona!
And it was I, Captain Bill Hardy,
Who founded old Hardyville in Arizona
On the sandy banks of the cool Colorado.
Back when Lincoln was still warm
And the blood of Gettysburg was still not dry.
Back when the old west was coming alive
With wagon wheels and railroad ties.
Growing as a child would
With intrepid enterprise and such derring-do
The likes of which few eyes have seen since!
I came out west from New York
As Captain of a California-bound wagon train
And found a fortune in gold in Placer County.
But it was in the Arizona Territory where I later
Made my mark, and lost my fortune.
Oh my friends. I found out.
Found out what plain hard work can accomplish
And I learned of its resultant riches.
I found out.
Found out what plain greed and dishonesty can accomplish
And I learned of its resultant poverty.
Alas, I was but a survivor in life,
And that was my final legacy.
My friends, have you ever stared death straight in the face?
Have you ever seen the eyes of a wanton murderer
Only an inch away from your own eyes?
Nothing is more frightening and more sobering than that!
But I, Captain Bill Hardy, at your service please,
Experienced it first-hand that day in the scalding desert sand.
That Indian devil was right there!
His nose next to my nose!
But I got away!
Ran away from that place and lived to tell about it!
My friends, next time you come to Clark Cemetery in Whittier,
Go to the eastern fence by Dorland Street,
At the corner there, you will find my little plot of land.
It is a far cry from having an entire city named after you!
But it is a fine and restful spot.
Come closer and lean down to me.
I wish to extend my firm handshake to you all!
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.
Leah See
1817 – 1897
I lived 80 long years.
Struggling with sickness and deprivation.
Toiling like a slave
In the mad heat of 80 summers
And the bone-numbing cold of 79 winters.
Striving and straining for happiness and earthly fulfillment.
No man or woman, or God even,
Can take away my honest dealings and daily concerns
For the well, the sick and the dying
Of this former fledgling Quaker community.
But know this old Whittier town,
Town of a hundred years hence,
Yes, you, my once adopted home
By the rising hills to the north and to the east.
Know that my anger for you holds no bounds.
After sweet Artilissa passed away,
You let my grave go to waste.
My tombstone was vandalized and left toppled
By the youthful foolish ones
From the big high school to the south.
Left crumpled and broken
There in the weeds and the trash.
My 80 years as a struggling woman and wife
Left as refuse for the rats!
My final resting place here in Clark Cemetery
Is not to be found now.
You in your temporary wisdom took my name away,
Took my life dates, carved with condoling care,
My allotted years as a breathing thinking human being,
Carved for all time on my beautiful expensive tombstone.
But you took it away in a trash truck.
Mine and my fellow citizens’
Here in this hollowed ground of seeping death.
So, if you dare,
Living ones of the now and the future
Come visit me here in the night.
Come to this haunted old graveyard on Broadway Street.
And I will show myself to you in my anger!
I will show you my living spirit
In all its resplendent colors of the rainbow!
Come boldly, distant cousins and ancestors,
And I will prove to you
There is no death!
James McKee Rogers
1836 – 1900
I offer up this epitaph as an ode instead,
An ode of love, affection and gratitude
To Whittier, my true home away from my one true home.
I dedicate this plain and humble song
To finding this paradise in the mustard fields
To finding peace and serenity in these kindly hills here,
Hills shaded by a thousand trees
In truth, trees planted for purposes unstated and unspoken,
Trees used for hiding the human follies and frolics
Of my brothers and sisters in the faith
Acts of hidden intimacies not seen by the eyes of the Quaker elders.
My friends, you cannot imagine the beauty of the sunrise
Here in my beloved Whittier
The erect beauty of one particular sunrise
On a summer’s morning in 1889.
I remember Hattie and me riding double in the heights
Scanning the far-away Pacific blue
Scanning the infinite translucence of a million heartbeats.
Down, down the ever-spreading, ever-descending landscape.
Up there in the heights we found a special magic,
Found the crash of cymbals and the bang of a thousand drums!
Found the flight of a thousand eagles and
The stampede of a hundred wild horses!
And so my friends, and
To Whittier, I say adieu!
Adieu and goodbye to a life of repeating days and nights
Of forgotten repeating conversations
With dozens of old friends now dead and gone.
The worms of Clark Cemetery know them all
Know of the hidden intimacies not seen by the living.
They have found propitiation for the sins of mankind.
Viola Fuller
1879 – 1909
For it is written in solemn Chinese ideography,
That two women under one roof spells trouble.
For indeed my life found trouble
And death quite early due to influenza.
I spent my leisure hours in China Town
16 miles to the west in old Los Angeles.
Spent hours in the mildewed shops and the seedy cafes.
Finding culture, romance and ruin in the moody moonlight!
Finding spontaneous spasms in the back musty rooms.
It is true Roscoe Settle found my inner source.
He probed for the truth of my deep hidden springs.
Riveting moist springs of passion and sexual majesty.
Together, as like intertwining tied ribbons,
We embraced the spectral fireworks of a multitude of shooting stars!
Embraced the soaring glissandos of life and love!
But in the end
I decided to kill him dead.
I could not bear for one more minute, the other woman,
That other thing named Lottie Gordon.
But it all backfired on me.
For instead, I killed his father,
One Marcus Settle: late of Whittier Town.
Forgive me Providence, for I have sinned.
But in my sin,
I have found eternal rest from my nagging jealousies.
Found eternal peace from the tortuous kisses
Of one Roscoe Settle!
George W. Towne
1847 – 1899
From Iowa I came by restless wagon train.
From the mid-west I arrived
With satchel and silken scalp still intact.
I read Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to pass the time.
I read the Gospels of John and Luke.
I read Harriet Beecher Stowe and
I read John Greenleaf Whittier.
I saw the icy Rocky Mountains beckon me to the west
Waving their invisible fluid fingers
Like blond ballerinas in silent ever-moving tableaux.
I saw the railroad snake through the endless golden valleys.
And I saw the muddy roads converge
Under a hundred bee-infested pepper trees.
And it was here in this new colony I found a home
For my wife Fannie and our three dubious children.
You could always spot me in the distance,
Walking down Pickering Street.
For I was the dapper one in black derby hat
Taking the cash in the Greenleaf Avenue millinery.
I was the suited one in dusty black,
Winking and bowing to the lovely ladies
Showing my respect but imagining something else
Deep within my empty searching soul.
I was the tall, cleanly shaven erudite
Who had memorized the entire Gospel of John
And walked the northern foothills at sunset
Wearing my ever-present derby hat
And meeting, yes,
Secretly meeting Lucy Swain
Under the tall cedar tree on Rideout Ranch.
Confession is indeed good for the soul.
Confession has always allowed a good but dishonest man to sleep soundly.
To sleep long languorous hours on a cold winter’s night.
To sleep for an eternity without guilt or regrets
Under the hardened forgotten dirt of Clark Cemetery.
For I was the handsome one in derby hat
And only Lucy and I knew,
Only she and I knew intimately
About the patch of soft carpet-like grass,
There under the tall silent cedar tree
On Rideout Ranch.
Tillie Lydston
1843 – 1905
I was forty six
When I first saw the hills.
Those most magical eastern hills of my home.
I loved Whittier as my mother
And it saddens me I can’t be there again.
I left behind family and friends in faraway Illinois
For those wondrously beautiful eastern hills,
Where my new friends set up homes and feasted
With many songs of worship to our Lord.
On Sundays we all sang loudly and earnestly
In the sun’s benevolent rays of the Friends Church.
Gathering all our voices together into one enormous crescendo,
We celebrated the presence of God.
My gift was music
And to God I offered up my singing voice in praise,
And this I did for 41 years.
During apple blossom time in ‘69
I married Samuel
And he stood by me
As I grew old, got fat and decided to leave Illinois.
When we reached here by train,
Me and Samuel set up the business on Greenleaf,
And made our home
Amidst the whispering cedars and pines on Pilgrim Way.
I bore two children in the upstairs bedroom,
Amidst the doilies and the teacups,
And I heard the voices of heaven
Reveal the truth of a thousand questions.
I died with my Bible
And my head propped on a pillow.
Here in Clark Cemetery
I feel no death,
Just continuing life.
Amidst the singing voices of the dead.
Ruth Helen Uhrig
1888 – 1908
I remember the Indian summers most of all.
The drowsy balmy days of late September and early October.
I remember the calming chorus of the trees,
Especially here in Clark Cemetery,
With the benign wind caressing the still branches,
Teasing and tickling the leaves,
Performing masterfully,
The silent music of a thousand lazy afternoons.
Listen. Can you hear it?
And I recall that afternoon in 1903
While standing under the shady pepper tree,
Here in Clark Cemetery
That moment of sweet virginal bliss.
That long-forgotten one second in time,
When that blue-eyed fox named Roscoe
Kissed me, a mere girl of 15, on the lips.
There, on the threshold to my very soul!
Oh, the true joys of life are so simple and so fleeting!
And finally,
To my friends in old Whittier town,
I discovered after my demise that,
There is a happy way to die and a sad way to die.
And it will all depend on how well you treated people while alive.
Thankfully, I died the happy way.
In my sleep.
Dreaming of the silent music,
On a long-ago afternoon in September,
Under the old shady pepper tree,
Here in Clark cemetery
Fireflies’ Prelude
By Stacy Savage (Indiana)
The sun surrenders
To the sky
As the moon awaits
With his winking eye
To begin his routine
In the rosy wake
So the sun may take
Her needed break.
Fireflies come
And bid adieu
In their evening performance,
Right on cue,
Above the meadows
And prairie grass—
Pulsating flashes
As they pass
And dance in the air
With lanterns bright,
And the stars welcome
The magic of night.
Editor Stacy Savage is seeking submissions for a poetry contest. Poems can be up to 40 lines and must be about an animal – be it domestic or wild. No limit on number of entries submitted. Previously published works are acceptable. There is a $1 per poem entry fee. All proceeds will go to Madison County Humane Society in Anderson, Indiana, to help with medical and cleaning expenses due to a virus that spread in the shelter that made many dogs ill. Send submissions, along with the entry fee and a cover sheet with name, address, email address, and titles of poems submitted, to: Animal Poetry Contest, 3121 Mounds Road, Anderson, Indiana, 46016.
Make check payable to: Madison County Humane Society.
First place winner will receive a copy of the 1870 antique book: The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume II, a one year subscription to The Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, a complimentary copy of the July/August 2015 and September/October 2015 issues of Creative Inspirations, a Humane Society of the United States Christmas blanket, and $20. Second place winner will receive a one year subscription to The Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems. The deadline is June 15, 2015.
Dennis Cummings
1844-1920
To my friends of the 41st Infantry!
My men, my brave brothers from Wisconsin, are invited!
Invited RSVP to my domesticated, but dignified digs
On south Milton Street in Whittier town,
There, above the tracks of the Southern Pacific
There, surrounded by my better half’s tulips and pumpkins
There, surrounded by unequivocal respect and love
Of my loyal and nagging better half, Ellen, and
Of my dutiful and loyal son, Lee Roy.
There is a window upstairs facing north,
North to the rising green hills of Whittier town,
North even to the Stars and Stripes
Of my Wisconsin brothers
Of my fellow Wisconsin freedom fighters!
Nightly there, I light a candle for my friends.
My intrepid men, my brave brothers!
Those charging advancing storming souls
Those rampaging, death-staring warriors of the 41st!
Like the fiercely flowing rapids of the Tennessee
There in Chattanooga, and thereabouts,
My brothers and my friends braved the bullets,
Faced the fusillade of fire, the unspeakable violence, and
Even found glorious sacrifice,
Found glorious death in battle,
In the suffocating smoke and sulfur
Of fifty thousand muskets.
Yes, you are invited my brothers! My friends!
Come to my humble home here on South Milton Street
And look to the upstairs window.
There is a candle burning there for you.
Burning with respectful gratitude.
Burning with a proud silence
For my brave brothers,
The storming rampaging men of the 41st.
Edwardo Badia
1856-1914
That low bred confidence man!
That snooking swindler who took me for a fool.
“Hey Gregg, you thief!
You owe me still, even as I rot here,
Regrettably ensconced inside this bursting old boneyard,
Final resting grounds of a thousand parted pilgrims,
No doubt suffering in claustrophobic hell,
Like this old besotted soul,
Decades and repeating weeks of years,
After Mister White planted me in this dusty earth,
Next to the famished broad oak over here,
A few yards from the stone crosses of the Luetweilers,
Buried and cushioned in the wrong grave,
Stuffed inside the tomb of a swindled corpse!
Sir, we shook hands on that deal!
I was to be transferred to Whittier Heights,
My new spacious home for these dusty old bones,
In exchange for the procurement of land there,
Burial land with pleasant vistas, green grass, and
“Eternally sweeping views of the Pacific,”
Fitting views indeed, for my sweet wife and loving mother;
And although my family was ceremoniously exhumed,
And taxied there by a duo of horses and a trio of men,
Sir, you forgot me here, forlorn and alone,
And still in this detested grave!
How could you knowingly leave me here,
Separated and apart from my sweet wife,
And my loving mother?
Sir, I demand a refund!
Gertrude Bangle
1895-1914
By name I was called Trudy.
When living.
Dear friends of the living,
Do you know Whittier town
Is a very haunted town?
Do you know my ghost still walks
Still silently steps by you?
Oblivious you?
Here in the stalking shade of the myrtles?
Here in the dark shadows of the walnuts?
I still seek the solace from a seeping sadness.
Still seek the light of truth
The air of freedom
In a dark smothering hole
Here in Mt. Olive Cemetery.
Come my friends, come to me now.
Come inside this old resting ground
This long deceased land of a thousand yawning holes
And find my wandering ghost.
You will find me lurking by the Bailey and the Baird graves
Here in the dark belly of death and life eternal.
Here in the stalking shade of the myrtles.