The Pioneer Poems:
The Life and Times of Alice Maude
by Leslie Smith Dow
For Darrin
Cover artwork:
Original oil painting "Cruise Control" © 2015 Debra A. Horwitz
© 2015 Leslie Smith Dow. All rights reserved.
ALICE MAUDE
looks directly
at the camera
dares
her picture to be taken
laughs,
and gives away her soul
me,
I always look away
or blink
at the last minute
RELENTLESS GREEN CHILDREN
like children of nuns
on iron bedstead
on pillow of sugar sacks
we slept through
the orange fire of summer
our room full of the freshness of apples
the pink and white
of June roses
the warm breeze of new laundry
while out the window
Maude bent over her plots of sun
relentless green searing the grasses
and rustling the trees
in our dreams
we flew down to join you
LONG GRASS OF TWILIGHT
first the Indians came
then the gypsies
all travellers welcomes on our land
we too were merely passing through
in the long grass of twilight
we and our small cousins crept
to the edge of their smoky campfires
to see with their eyes
the dancing the singing
longing to leave the land
as much as they loved it
ME AND MARGERY
did the work of men between us five
pretty Helen too frail for threshing
Charlotte and Beatrice too proud
in the fields we laboured
beside our father
without sons
later in the bad times
it was me pulled the plough
Marge guiding the blade
through the worthless earth
no men to speak of
two boys in Flanders
Jack up to his elbows
in axle grease and drink
JACK'S BLUE STREAK
her hair curled in long waves
to her lap
when I first saw her
I'd take the car
head north, anywhere
to clear the city from my mind
breathe the grease
and poison
from my lungs
a horse in the bend of the road
legs clawing sky
Alice Maude astride
cursing a blue streak
threatening me with her whip
I knew she'd do it always
THE LOMBARDY FAIR
semi-darkness
he sized her up
his blue eyes
her dark hair