Lucinda Matlock

Masters just can't stop with the obsessive symbolic titling thing.

It's grating.

Lucinda = from Lucina, the Roman goddess of light and CHILDBIRTH ("raising the twelve children")

Matlock = locked into matrimony ("together for seventy years")

But I still think this is a strong poem, very strong.

LUCINDA MATLOCK


I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight 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.



All I can say to that is. Wyrd.