The Folks Back East Got Your Letter

[to the wagon trains that threw the maps away]

showboater, shilly shally
all I want to say:
the creek bed's dry;
don't go that way.

the barn burned down
before the hay.

the silos just melted.
no one came to the rebuilding party
angels on their last ladders

picked our rotted fruit.

all shimmery gold the pick axe strayed
into the mud; in just one day
well water scooped into our hands

evaporated. how are the children?
say hi to the folks
who don't know the Virginia Reel.

send wagon wheels...

send orange peel and citron, maybe.
a punch bowl ladle made from cut-glass.
grass seed. if it pleases you to think it grows here.

and sassafras. molasses candies.
an oistritch feather, tissue sewing pattern,
red shoe leather,

down country remedies for someone
sick from greasepaint and the smell of crowds
who don't know where they are
staring straight at it.

send bolts of silk, fresh underwear.
barrels of cough syrup to us here; to us-
you used to know

where trees were green
and the porch swings swung
in the minted breezes;

and us all laughing
in the afternoon sun of the
cooling drinks and the lily hands.

send piano strands. glad music.
berry picking.
send prayers on angel wings

before the next snows come:
to us, here, waylaid by
the folkloric maps in the newspapers.

pointing the way.

mary angela douglas 9 june 2014

Note on the Poem: the poem is my imaginary letter sent by pioneers to people they knew back east. Here is how I imagine the reply the folks back home posted by Western Union to the imaginary stranded pioneers: Sell golden axe. you should get something for it. of course the pick axe wasn't gold. The letter writer in his despair is telling a tall tale all his own.

Of course another problem is the strangeness of the items requested by the sender who may be equally affected by sun stroke or sarcasm, depending on previous experience with asking for help. Or delusional. The golden axe is out of place here, like those pictures where you are instructed to find something that doesn't belong with the other items.

Also, the poem reflects the dilemma of people asking for help who get sent things other people don't need anymore which are completely useless to the receipient like the contents of a missionary barrel.
Or you know, you go to an agency asking for help with rent and they direct you to the food pantry. Or vice versa. People offering the things you don't need, bypassing the things you do for whatever reason.

A problem within a problem. A person sent on a quest with the wrong information and, as a subset of that confusion is his own propensity for fairy tales, over and above the newspaper accounts. Or. a person making up stories as a means of survival perhaps the real source of all the best fairy tales and legends.

The telegram reply (sell the golden axe) indicates the folks back home were literal. Which may be why the pioneer left home in the first place, being of a different disposition.
One true fact in the poem: many American pioneers in the
latter part of the 19th century were misled by maps and
glowing reports (possibly entirely fabricated to sell more copy) by Eastern newspapers. Their maps showed water where there was no water, mountain passes where no one could get through. And that was the least of it.

Everything was not like Little House on the Prairie. It still isn't. The neighbors do not always show up to "raise" the new barn. God bless the ones who do. 

The maps that other people make for you don't always turn out to be so accurate.