Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It’s Saturday Night again –
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) Create a poem – rhyming, free verse, doggerel, limerick, etc. – about genealogy research, whether general or specific.
OK – I’ll admit it up front. I’m cheating on this assignment. If I was to rank my skills, writing would be low on that list and writing poetry would be towards the bottom, if not the bottom. Since I have two relatives who did write poetry, I’d much rather share one of their poems.
My great-grandmother, Josie Winifred Hammond left a handwritten book of poetry about her family and life in Dodge City. Those poems were shared as part of the Kansas Memory project. Links to those poems are shared on the Josie’s Poetry page of this blog. Below is her poem about a sod shanty on a homestead claim.
While Josie is the family poet on my dad’s side of the tree, my great aunt Gladys is the family poet on my mom’s side of the tree. One of Gladys Olive Mentzer Green’s poems, “Symbol of the Great Plains.” was self-published in the booklet Along My Road.
Symbol of the Great Plains
The lonely windmill is a monument
To guard the prairie and to symbolize
The pioneer who strove each day to rise
With dreams of home and family content.
The windmill reaches toward the firmament;
Its turning wheels could never minimize
The force of clouds in thunderous prairie skies.
Their power by the prairie wind is sent
To water field and pasture on the plain
Maintaining life and nourishing the wheat,
The corn, alfalfa, maize and prairie flower.
The pioneer recalls the golden grain.
When windmills groaned and squeked to rhythmic beat
Sustaining man and plain with wind blown power.
I am not a poetry fan either and almost skipped this week’s challenge. I came up with a few lines, but how terrific that you have family members who wrote poetry. They are both beautiful poems.
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