A POEM ABOUT RUTH BOWERS

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I Never Knew Rosella Ruth 1902

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I have two likenesses of her, and a letter

written to her parents, just after she

was married in 1902. Nearly every

other paragraph mentioned “Charlie.”

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In the first photograph, her hair was pulled

severely back from her symmetrical face,

her round heavy-lidded blue–gray eyes

stared out under carefully shaped brows,

and a strong chin held her blended round

cheeks in place. Her plainly pinked lips

seemed motionless over a black

bodice lined with a white parson’s collar.

She had retouched the photo herself.

Was it the retouched woman who

willingly surrendered to death, and left

an infant and a devastated Charles behind?

.

Aunt Lillian’s photo of her was less formal,

less perfect than the family recollections.

A vital, direct, and hopeful gaze looked

at me openly as if curious about what kind of

granddaughter I had become. I noticed

her face was not symmetrical at all,

left ear and eye slightly lower than the right,

with a hint of blood, dark in sensuous lips.

Her mouth and chin were still determined,

but did I imagine a hint of mischief ?

And wisps of hair, escaped in wayward

streaks from that disciplined cap of hair.

.

She looked so familiar. That face could

have been mine, once, was the face

I saw in the mirror when I was young;

The face in the photograph shared

my features; the same round heavy eyes,

except brown, like Charlie’s, a drooping

left eye and ear like hers, nose straight

but tilting up. In the mirror

I saw that at my age now, I was like her

grandmother, instead of she being mine.

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I was often told I was her namesake and

had inherited her “gift,” a rare artistic talent.

In this influence, I have lived my life

with determination to redeem the gift

we each were given at birth. I view her now,

as a mere girl of only twenty- three, scry

her face for inner strengths, and wonder at

her weaknesses, by which to measure

the lessons I have learned, that might

have fulfilled the life she didn’t get to live.

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Writing and Vintage Montage are the sole Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.

WHENCE COMETH THE CUCKOO?

The Cuckoo's Child
As an unborn child, you fluttered
like a caged bird, practicing to
disrobe yourself of my fleshly husk.
Even before fully formed, my child,
you struggled to redefine your
boundaries, while yet confined
by the walls of the nest.

Nature decreed expansion
as you mindlessly attacked both
the source of your nourishment
and of your confinement.

Even as motherly instinct
compelled me to feed you,
I did not shape the egg,
as you did not choose your parent.
I understood only as you fledged;
you are a foreign species.
You are a cuckoo’s child.

By Ruth Zachary Written in 1976


The name of this blog and this project was taken from this poem.


All images and writing are the copyright © of Ruth Zachary, unless otherwise attributed.

Alfred Bowers, The Violin Maker

The Violin Maker,Vintage Montage by Ruth Zachary © Includes Alfred Bowers, Battle scene (re-enactment) Certificate listing those in New York Company C of the Civil War, Letters on Muster Papers Alfred wrote to first wife Mary in 1863(approx.), second wife Laura, five of their daughters, two homes in Kingsley, and Alfred with his violins. Muster Papers were forms for recording service accounts by soldiers to document pay roll checks.


Union Soldier’s Lament

I feared, my dear, not seeing you again
but hid my passion from the public eye.
You took my hand before I took the train.
I did not kiss your lips nor hold you nye.

I did not know the torment in your breast
held close in silence as you failed to write
a word, while I anguished there without rest
as I lay lonely on my cot at night.

I scrawled a letter in reflected light
on paper snatched from flames before it burned.
I sent my payroll home when I could write;
eight days to reach you; but no note returned.

I made it home in two years more, alive
While you, our children all were gone in five.


Sonnet by Ruth Zachary© Dec. 2008

Angels and Demons, Image by Ruth Zachary

The Accidental Child 1944

The Accidental Child 1944

It wasn’t known how the fire began,
probably sparked by burning leaves,
flying in the breeze. It was discovered
behind the garage, burning in the long
dry grass of late October 1943.

Having already laundered much
of the day, Mama then spent
several hours fighting the fire with
wet towels and buckets of water,
and pumped by Granddad, afraid
the rented garage might burn down.

She put the fire out, but she did not
finish the laundry. She was doubled
over in pain. That was how their second
pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Ava
was heart-broken by that loss.

Daddy told relatives
they had decided not to have more
children; that they would be too old,
at forty and forty-two, but not long after,
Mama was expecting again.

Daddy was terribly embarrassed over
the timing, so soon after the miscarriage,
and told everyone it was an accident,
something Mama did not confirm or deny.

When I got older, I remembered
the looks exchanged between them
when Daddy said it, and later how
Mama explained she was in charge
of birth control, and by default the lack of it.

Mama was delighted from the start
to have another chance at a second child.
I think the story about the accident
was my father’s invention; allowed
to stand by my mother’s omission.

But my sister grew up believing she
was an accident, while I was on purpose.

Written July 27, 2009

A MOTHERLESS DAUGHTER

A Motherless Daughter. Vintage Montage by Ruth Zachary


As she grew, her mother's photograph
Peered down over the top of the piano,
somber light eyes grave and stern
watched while she learned the keys
making magic chords transcribed from
sounds the spirits played upon her skin,
scales fingered in wordless harmonies there.

Her mother's picture hung upon the wall,
sainted now having died of scarlet fever
days after giving birth. She too, had scarce
escaped, found hanging off the bed
in her long nightdress, up-side-down,
like a cat in a sack, hem held fast
under her mother's body, she had been
scooped up by a watchful grandmother.

Sometimes she felt her grandma’s arms
holding, rocking, until sleep came and dreams,
where she could sink into a warm watery world,
where breath did not matter, and the universe
pulsed in her head, keeping steady rhythms
and harmonies, until surrendering, she could
escape those relentless haunting fears.

Sometimes at night, sleep refused
to carry her away, and she would float, adrift,
the raft of bed pushed hard against her back;
body pressed tight between deep
bedding, and weighted darkness.
Overhead, a cold dark cloud seemed to scream,
but she had no breath; no voice, no light.

*This post is out of sequence and should be placed following the entry of Dec. 12, 2008.

All Images and Writing are the exclusive property and Copyright of Ruth Zachary.

A COUNTRY BOY

Farm Boy. Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary.
Click on bottom to see enlarged view.

In a Pig’s eye

Heart pounding,
he knew the pig knew.
It screamed before
the knife struck its throat.
The pig knew he was the predator,
having already heard
six brothers bellow their last curse
in rage and terror.

But …
this one looked him in the eye
as its blood soaked the ground.
He was the last sight
in the the dying pig's glare.
He saw his own silhouette
fade slowly in its gaze;
felt his own seventeen year old
innocence disappear, deaden.

Work incomplete,
he used the gun on the last two.
Avoided that last accusing look,
But it was too late to escape
the wound inscribed
in his own breast,
scar etched into memory.

That night he wrote,
"Butchered hogs today.
Stuck 7, shot 2."

Images and poems are the exclusive copyright of Ruth Zachary.

VILLAGE GIRL

Filling Her Shoes. Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary

Foraging Near Cottage Street

My mother said In 1910,
there were still trees and thickets
and ponds around Kingsley.

“Grandma Bowers used to take
me to the crick, that crossed the
meadow down the street.
We used to catch fish on a pin,
with a worm and heavy string
or button thread on a stick.”

“We used to go picking berries
like we do now,” she said.
There were raspberries,
huckle berries and black berries.
My mother’s favorite were little
red berries of wintergreen,
or their bright green leaves in spring.

Writing and Images are the exclusive Copyright of Ruth Zachary

THE BOWERS HOMESTEAD 1890s

The Bowers Homestead. Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary

Homestead Near Kingsley

The Bowers came to Kingsley
in 1884 or 85. They settled on a farm
near the railroad where the train
went rumbling across the corner,
its steam whistle warning
anyone on the road.

When the Bowers family came,
to Michigan, they brought
Esther, Ruth and Ethel.
Lilly was born in 1886.
Pearl came five years after, in 1891.

In ’93, when Pearl was two
her mother, heavy with a child
in her belly, heard the warning
and went running to the tracks,
barely pulling her daughter
off the rails in time. Was that why
they moved to the village in 1893?

Or was it for the birth of Grace,
Born in September of the same year?

All writing and images are the exclusive Copyright of Ruth Zachary.

THE STARR MATRIARCHS OF THE 1800s

The Starr Matriarchs - 1800s. Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary.

The First Theory Of Relativity

1 Dr. Comfort Starr came to this country
on the Mayflower from Ashire England in 1620.

2 Thomas Starr was put in prison
for being sympathetic with the Indians.
He was later released and given a tract of land
in Connecticut as compensation.
He raised his family in Thompsonville, CN.

3.Elias Starr

4. David Starr

5. Johnathon Starr was married to Sally Starr.
The couple had three children,
Sara and William J. (third unknown.)

For two hundred years
Women from other families were only
Married into the Starr Lineage,
And were not truly Starrs.
Other family names were extraneous.

By the fifth generation,
Women married into the Starr line
Became Starrs by association.

An Alternate Theory of Relativity

Generation 6.
William J Starr was born Nov. 8, 1843
He died Mar.19, 1907
He married Eliza Jane Reynolds, (Dutch)
In Fallsburg N.Y.

Eliza was born Jan. 20, 18--?
Her parents were Andrew Reynolds
And Catherine Vanbenscoten (Dutch)
Eliza died Oct 7, 1886
Twenty-one years before her husband.

They had thirteen children
In New York State.
Eight daughters, and five sons.
Their farm prospered, and
They were one of the first
Free Methodist families in the country.

Since William outlived his wife,
Either he chose to observe his
Wife’s family history, or perhaps
some of his eight daughters did.

Was there a cultural shift in thinking,
because of educating women who now
Could write down their maternal connections?
Or was it the invention of photography
That affirmed that women existed?

Was this a small act of subversion,
Or was it a Dutch tradition that the
Women stayed in touch with
Relatives no matter how far
removed by patrilocation?

Whatever the reasons, a shift occurred.
Sisters, aunts, cousins, nieces, Grands…
Grandmothers, grand daughters,Greats….
All kept abreast of each others lives,
And proudly passed down their traditions.

Mother Rite

Mothers are the keepers of culture.
For a good while, I ignored my own
mother’s stories, but she whispered them
again and again from her spirited lips
to my sleeping ears in dreams,
reminding me of the ways that in life,
she stitched the Mother rite into my body,
threaded it through my brain,
nourished me with stories of
women’s lives, struggles, victories.
She clothed me in a patchwork,
cut from the cloth of their aprons
and wove me into the tapestry of
our mingled family heritage until
I understood I was one of them.

All Poems and Images are the Copyright of Ruth Zachary. Permission is required to reproduce them.

1903

The Sainted, Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary

Snowstorm 1903

A heavy snow, they said
came suddenly that year in Kingsley,
When you were born in 1903.
Relatives said the doctor
had to take a sleigh to their home
to deliver you into the world.

The day you arrived was
barely in time to survive
your own young mother,
taken by Scarlet fever.
Terrible, to gain your own life
while your mother lost hers,
a burden you carried all your days.

Your father was honored in his sorrow,
but useless in his grief,
to care for an infant,
wandering the country for three years
seeking answers, or his own death,
which nearly took him more than once.

She was first of six Bowers girls
to go. Her family became
death-obsessed. Her picture
was placed above the piano,
to make sure all revered
her memory; altar-like, a shrine
to her saintly status…
by virtue of having died.

And you, by virtue of being her child,
became a half -saint as well, because
if you were sent to take her place
how could you be otherwise, and
what was there to do but treat you well,
while living in fear for your fragility?

Montage Images and Writing are the property of Ruth Zachary.