Along the Lonesome Trail

Ras, Old man G.W., and Dan Stapp 1929 in Texas

I never knew my father's Uncle Ras, but I know from the  letters and the pictures that I've pieced together that he was a collector of our family memories: of deaths, of dances, of calf roping, and hunting.  His life was full for 82 years.

Ras was the ninth of the thirteen children born to George Washington Stapp and Mary Alice Austin Stapp.  He was born January 23, 1894 in Boone County, Arkansas.  He was named Ras King for the doctor who delivered him, and more than likely the first child to be born with the help of a doctor.

The next three babies born to to GW and Mary Alice died within a year of birth, but number thirteen Virgle Roland Stapp was healthy.  He was born December 20, 1902 and lived 81 years.

Sadly, my great grandmother, Mary Alice, was not healthy after giving birth to so many children and living a rugged life.  Ras remembered moving from Boone County, Arkansas across the border to unnamed land called Oklahoma.  During this move and unsettled time three babies were born and died.  Mary Alice was too sick after Virgle was born to care for her family.  Ras writes, "No matter how frail and sick ma was she read her Bible to us every night.  When she couldn't read, we took turns reading out loud so she could hear God's words."  In the end she knew was going to die so she begged G.W. "Take me to Texas.  I don't want to die in this lonesome land. "  G.W.  loaded up his children and wife into the covered wagons, taking mules, chickens, and a few belongings and headed south to Texas.  Ras recalled that the older children took care of the younger ones and the boys hunted for food daily.  The journey was even harder with their mother.  "We spent many days stopped along the trail," Ras wrote in a letter, "because ma was too sick to move.  When she felt better we'd start again."

"When just inside the Texas line from Oklahoma lands, I don't know what part, ma became so sick we had to stop again.  Ma gathered all us kids around her bed and talked with us and said prayers before she died.  I can see it like it was yesterday.  We dug her grave and buried her just off the wagon trail in a little grove of post oak trees.  I always wanted to go back and look for it as the years went by, but never made it back."  There was no gravestone set upon her grave.  Her request was granted.  She died in Texas on October 25, 1903 only ten months after giving birth to her thirteenth child.  Ras was only nine years old when he left his mama's grave.

Readings and Greetings: What Love Comes to by Ruth Stone

While watching a You Tube video on TED presentations the speaker referred to a poet I'd never heard of, Ruth Stone.  It bothered me that I'd fallen out of touch with poetry readings, so I Googled the name Ruth Stone and became an instantly more curious.  Ruth Stone stated, "I decided very early on not to write like other people."  That convinced me to find her poems.  Her newest book in the Hutchinson Public Library is What Loves Comes To New and Selected Poems (c.2008), and it was just what a curious soul needs on a cold winter's day.

These lines I cut from a poem she wrote called Fragrance (p 45) --

Poems came to me

As if from far away.

I would feel them coming,

I would rush into the house,

Looking for paper and pencil.

It had to be quick,

For they passed through me

And were gone forever.

Instantly, I knew we shared a bond.  The more I read, the more I knew this lady who lives in the woods in snowy Vermont.  Perhaps she's a modern Thoreau or Robert Frost in her observance of nature.

Through out her life she has traveled and taught writing at several universities, and in her travels she must have passed through our golden state.

Kansas as Africa  (p.64)

The rolled hay is like hippopotami

and Kansas is the veldt.

The bare fields

after the snow is gone

pale gold in the sun;

and the occasional tree

twisted like the monkey puzzle tree

not yet leafed out,

dry and scaly.

And the blue snowmelt

makes water holes

for phantom zebras

and the slack stomachs of hunting lions

in the gold grass gone to seed beside the tracks.

Poetry reading is very personal.  One reason I enjoy it so much is that I can pick and choose which poems I'll read and reread.  A book of poems doesn't have to be read cover to cover, and that gives me freedom to ponder, reflect, or skip over and wonder, "what was she thinking when she wrote that?"

Ruth sees the corn, unlike myself, and writes in her poem “Seed” (p. 292): 

Corn is universal,

So like a Roman senator.

Its truths are silk tassels.

True its ears are sometimes

Rotten, impure,

But it aspires in vast acres,

Rectangular spaces,

To conspire with every pollinator

And to bear for the future

In its yellow hair.

I hope someone jumps into her books, full of enthusiasm and delight in the new, and comes away refreshed.  Tell me what do you think of this lady poet, Ruth Stone.