Seymour was sad that everyone generalized his kind
They do not think I hear, but it hurts, I truly do mind
They say we are slow, because we are snails you see
He did not have to tell me, said his Grandma Vee
She knew that the world made fun of the way they moved
In her day she had been a jitter bug dancer, who really could groove
But now she was just an old snail woman, alone in her chair.
But she knew Seymour did care, yes, her Seymour did care.
I think I will get a cycle and ride away good and fast.
Grandma smiled at his enthusiasm remembering her past.
She opened the garage, where inside sat her own Harley D.
Delighting Seymour when she said “you can have it for free”.
In Pacifica
I despise that portrait of me.
The likeness ends
with the name.
Yes, Jane Seymour, unbeheaded
Queen of England.
No, not of pinched thin lips
and sharp bird-beak nose.
Those hideous wimples
tented on over plucked foreheads
displaying protruding toad eyes....
I was not the smoldering gypsy beauty
of Anne Boleyn
nor the loud, youthful
excess of everything
Katherine Howard
but look what their beauty cost them:
one head apiece.
I was pretty in my watchful, rich-wombed way.
I carried a King in my devoted belly
and a great love for my cousin-husband,
a fondness for estranged young Mary
and a fervent wish for peace.
I carried the scent of my beloved garden
sweet forsythia
nor the harlot’s stink of
Paris and promiscuity.
I was loathe to undergo
a coronation
I did not want to be Queen
and yet here I am,
the only wife to receive a queen’s funeral
and share a tomb
with the Beheader.
SAMUEL SEYMOUR 1956
Concern for the man who fell out of the box,
says this crackerjack kid, “someone help him.”
Only five years old, Samuel Seymour
would be the last surviving witness,
nine decades later, who saw the man
in the theater break a leg, not the good kind.
“I was scared to death,” says the old man, letting
the contestants on I’ve Got A Secret guess
that he was at the Ford and he didn’t know
that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated,
feeling sorry for the wrong man, who took off running.
2/3/2020
the vintagenews.com
Video of Last Surviving Witness of Lincoln’s Assassination Recounting the Event
The fountain in Seymour Square's
All the colours of the rainbow
The clock tower behind
All the hours of the day
The flowers surrounding
All the scents available
And the spirit hanging in the air
Hears everything you say
Death can come so quickly
Like a thief in the night
But when the victim is so very young
It’s definitely not right.
John has left us way too soon.
We ask what does this mean?
He was in the prime of life
He was only seventeen!
It’s all part of the Master Plan
At least that’s what they say.
But that’s not too much comfort
To Mom and Heidi and Edna May!
In times of grief and sorrow
There are no words that one can find
To express the way that they must feel
At least not at the present time.
It’s said that John enjoyed his life
He liked to make folks laugh
He worked for charities and causes
And raised money on their behalf.
So, Family always keep in mind
No matter what you do
Be assured, “the man of the house”
Is watching over you!
Footnotes:
(This young man was a friend of the family
killed in an auto accident. Heidi and
Edna May are his sisters. "Man of the
House" is what he refered to himself
after his dad passed away a few years ago)
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