Living Like Lucinda

Lately, lines of poetry had begun to cross her mind. A trail of typed, black letters on white banners, appearing here and there on illogical occasions. While she was trudging upstairs with a basketful of clean laundry to put away. She'd gone to the dances at Chandlerville and played snap-out at Winchester. Poetry she'd read many years ago, and embraced, was coming back to comfort her, like an arm around her shoulder. She made no acknowledgement or wonder of it.

Serving customers at the bar, late at night, her feet hurting. The last-to-leave patrons had nothing to go home to, cigarette breath whistling heavy past the scent of booze in their glasses, grinning yellowed teeth wheezing over the same old bad jokes. A spidery pile of pull-tabs, offering nothing, next to the half empty drinks. She had no reason to feel superior, and didn't. The poem waved, smiling. One time we changed partners, driving home in the moonlight of middle June, and then I found Davis.

A pervasive sadness enveloped her during the day, of a kind that she couldn't shake off. She did not allow her thoughts to stray to Avery. And because of this, when the workday duties became mind-numbingly rote, her mind filled with a headachy emptiness instead.

She fell exhausted into bed at night, curled into the warmth of the poem, living like Lucinda; enjoying, working, raising a family, keeping house, tending the garden, through the dark night. She awoke to the long fingers of the sun on the bedclothes, somehow sated and rested.

The words returned to her, fleeting, but strong, and she remembered walks over the fields and through woods, birdsong, and gathering shells by the river, picking flowers and weeds to arrange in a vase on the table. She recalled what it was like to live loud, shouting and singing, and knew she had not lived enough yet.

Mary Ellen Seidel


Lucinda Matlock
I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed--
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you--
It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters; Spoon River Anthology

The striking painting shown above is by Edward Hopper, one of my favorite artists.