Valentine’s Day, 1884
Bright as the wax moon, her laugh swooned, swooped, a white crane,
Her blithe name the sprite rabbit I chased to make my life mate-
My Alice,… I- the blood, She – the chalice… Her eyes, a dove, no malice..
A family to establish, in our extravagant palace…Now I babble, unbalanced…
Grief the empty sleeve unsheathing death’s talons,… and with a high slice..
The wick blinks with night twice… “The Light Has Gone Out Of My Life”..
Mother Martha, Itty bitty “Mittie”, was Parthenon great – She’d Say,
“I came from owning slaves to being Thee’s slave”, but we praised
Her hard labor in the face of Father’s fortune was grace apportioned
As a taste of favor to my sore, thin – lungs wrung from asthma wheezes,
Many hymns sung from asking Jesus, “Please, Master heal this
Son!, like Paul’s kerchiefs slung in Past Ephesus”..Wracked with diseases,
I sleep slumped in a chair, - but once I’m aware, its back to being hyperactive
Catching bugs in glasses since Father bought an otter seal and hacked it!
Disgusted at its bits of guts and its bicuspids, but the stuff I trusted
Was each gush of grit and crust had purpose, fit and function – I was rare!
Like Audubon’s broad birds of the air… the raw earth of S. Fullerton Baird!
Until I got bullied and scared- So Pop taught me the thoughts of Franklin,
Pushups and fisticuffs toughen muscle expansions! A strong Father’s a Grand Thing..
Now Memory’s grafting Mittie, as it did
He in
his passing…
After Harvard, where I carved up beasts and theses alike,/
Doc said “put your heart first, cease seeking the strife”/,
but my strenuous life, part and parcel of Twain’s “Roughing It”/,
was, until my Lark sung, far-flung and unsubstantive/
She was my Sutter’s Gold, a wonder to behold in blessed splendor/
I know how Truman’s soul glowed in Nevada’s tense adventures/
So I took to tennis, riding, rowing, hiking, all aerobics/
Befriend her kin, impressed with skinny dips in the Potomac!/
Quoting French and probing those who attack the tracts of Lincoln/
All so she’d know that I’m, in fact, the man to whom she has to give in..
Only Defoe’s Crusoe, in his fits and throes, could know the cold hold of growing old alone
As I sit and, slow as a broken bone, try to fix and mold that frozen stone
That rolls in my chest, as, choking, my breath pressed … on that baby’s face.
My nose, her lips and Mittie’s cleft…. Dear God, Amazing Grace.
No emotions expressed as we both, motherless, now gaze, her eyes and mine
The oceans regress, and, open regret’s shallow waves drown Valentine’s…
And see, because I read one to three books per day/And I came self-made from a crooked way/To be brave as a brook that sprays/ in the face of a man who would look and say/“I will kill every single being that this stream feeds.”/ I believe in the Dream that America bleeds,/In the plains and the hills and the air of green trees!/
..So I leave my political passions, Place the babe in her aunt’s hands and abandon the mansion..
Which rings with the laughs of Alice and Mittie,..
I’m sick of that Death Rider that saddles the city…
My only love now lies West in the Wild.. Weigh this pain, just suppress it and smile..
Start up again with a Pioneer’s heart…Dakota Buffalo might provide a year’s spark..
Always read and dreamt about it.. Westward Ho!... Amazing.
I wonder if the tales I’ve traipsed will match the trails I’m blazing…
For “Mittie” and my lovely Alice, now Departed, ever felt
Sincerely, Son and Husband, T. Roosevelt.