I read with interest and agreement on Noel Hamiel’s recent article about poetry and its current versions in publications. Some poems have become popular songs—for example, Badger Clark’s “Round up Lullaby”.
I am including a poem I wrote after watching a meteor shower with three little granddaughters. The sonnet was written by my daughter when she was in school. The location is by the stagecoach trail along the James River from Huron to Mitchell and on to Yankton.
This is the route Laura and Almonzo Wilder went on their way to Missouri. It wasn’t noted in her journal she wrote along the way because the building was no longer there. Some of the sandstones were used to build the house across the river.
Respectively submitted by
Evelyn Walters,
Letcher

A Celestial Phenomenon
We got up in the middle of the night
To see a phenomenal shower from a meteorite.
The moon was just a sliver and gave no light,
The sky was perfect to view the sight.
They came in singles, pairs and groups
And left light in streaks and loop-to-loops.
We watched a while through the glass doors.
It was way to early to do chores.
Someone got dressed and went outside in the dark,
To get a getter look at every firecracker like spark.
Comets flew across the sky in every direction,
Too far from earth to make a connection.
Some fluttered and fell like a leaf in the breeze
Or left big, long tails over the trees.
One streak was wide and exceptionally long,
You’d think to a jet, it did belong.
Also visible were all of the stars.
The Big Dipper, Orion and even Mars.
Then in the still and silence way above the ground,
Came a faint squawking, honking wild goose sound.
The closer they came the louder it got,
All of those meteors would delay them not.
Then they passed and the silent night returned.
And one by one each and every meteor burned,
The little lights like candles went out.
Before going back to bed, we all gave a shout!
What took place in the sky that mild cool November night,
Really was an awesome sight!
By Evelyn Walters
Nov. 18, 2001

Memories of Old
Where a stage once rode,
Today only indentations remain
Of many a man in the train—
Fighting Indians along the road.

Fertile farmland soon sowed
Of fine crops of milo, corn and cane.
Grass rippling as a horse’s mane,
As the wind blows over the hills of old.

Around a cross designating God,
O! How beautiful a sight to behold
As the cross stands in water—golden rod!
The cross, sculpt of granite, now old.

Many a year has passed,
Memories of a trail long last.

Marlene Walters,
1973
Letcher
(The cross in the poem is located six miles north of Mitchell along the James River.)