Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SARAH DRAKE, by MARY J. ELMENDORF


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SARAH DRAKE, by                    
First Line: An open primer all her days and yet a puzzle to her neighbors
Last Line: Tintype when a boy.
Subject(s): Boredom; Ennui


An open primer all her days and yet a puzzle to her neighbors
Was Sarah Drake -- a Dorcas with an amorous dimple in her chin
And anthems in her eyes, a meek brown wren till someone in her presence
Chanced to mention rum or sin.

And then -- a transformation! Icy wrath would freeze her face to granite
While steely words like bayonets upon the weak and erring charged.
The preacher told John Weaver that if Sarah were Recording Angel
Hell would have to be enlarged.
Yet, just as Sarah hated sin and sinners, so she pitied sick folk;
'Twas said she won her lameness braving cold and storms and in their behalf;
Her gray hairs, nursing them. To the old and children she was always kindly --
They only ever heard her laugh.

Few beaux had come her way. John Weaver, staid and frugal, might have won her
But for the dire disgrace of Tom, his brother, said the countryside --
Black Tom who robbed a bank or two and stole the Judge's wife and lastly
At his townsmen's invitation died.

Some said that handsome Lemuel MacLaren nibbled at her savings
And broke her heart -- gay Lem whom most of us considered quite a catch!
And others, knowing Sarah's predilections, said the widowed preacher
And she would make a likely match.

But Sarah Drake was never married. Quietly she kept her counsel.
All surmised but none knew why and none were bold enough to ask.
She'd often say she had no time to waste on courtship, men, or nonsense --
Denouncing sinners was her task.

And thus her rounded days were lived like pears from laden branches falling.
Horizoned by our village with its drowsy-lidded happenings,
She seemed to some an actual angel lacking only wings; to others,
A hornet with a thousand stings.

Then at the accustomed hour one summer morning Sarah failed to waken.
Her next-door neighbor found her later sleeping placidly in bed
With a twisted smile upon her face, her bony hands that seldom rested
Relaxed upon the snowy spread.
And round her neck beneath her gown the neighbor found a heart-shaped locket
Of blue enamel on a silver chain, no bigger than a toy
A child might covet as a trinket for her doll, and in the locket -- Tom Weaver's
tintype when a boy.





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