Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MUDDY TOLL, by BESS STOUT LAMBERT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MUDDY TOLL, by                    
First Line: That was the year we moved down from the hills
Last Line: The river loves me now ... I wear its charm.
Subject(s): Rivers


That was the year we moved down from the hills;
The year the baby took the flu and died;
I missed the friendly trees and singing rills;

I sat and thought of my old home and cried.
My ears picked up the river's song of hate;
My eyes, the mud flats, drab and bare and dried.

The children romped and played, insatiate;
They didn't know the danger lurking there;
They couldn't know the river held their fate.
But I, with indescribable despair,

That made a coward of me, I longed to go
Back to the hills and know their friendly care.

"It's never passed the docks," they said, and so
I stayed, against my instincts, as you know.

I can't remember how I spent that day.
The river, jammed with ice, kept creeping near --
Kept creeping, creeping, holding me at bay.

I prayed, a stricken thing, all numb with fear;
And when the ice cakes piled against the locks,
Each seemed a face that held a mocking sneer.

Big Muddy lashed against the flood-torn docks;
It lashed and leaped -- then hurdled with a bound --
A snarling thing that beat in seriate shocks

Against my house until the awful sound
Made senses reel. One single thought stood out,
To save my babes. The house spun round and round.

What need back-breaking toil and frenzied shout?
The house was like an egg shell -- tossed about.

We gained the roof, but then, there was no need.
The flood took vicious toll, as one by one,
The children went to satisfy its greed.

I can't remember well, but when the sun
Had dried the banks and left the river calm,
Its hate appeased -- its wickedness all done --

I found a string of diamonds -- a balm
Left by the flood -- now tamed and flowing mild.
They bound in muddy leash the eleventh Psalm.

There's seven jewels, one for every child . . .
I wear them on my crepey, wrinkled arm
As though I might be wholly reconciled.

I'm crazy Nell -- I cannot come to harm,
The river loves me now ... I wear its charm.





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