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| Colonel Dyer pitching his scheme to Connecticut landowners |
A Certain Tract of Land
A piece of paradise. Glib promises
of fertile plains and valleys so unlike
the rocky fields they farmed. Connecticut
was filled with eager, able-bodied men
whose fathers’ lands, bequeathed, could not suffice
once divvied up among their many sons.
And so, when Colonel Dyer pitched his scheme
one summer evening at the Meeting House,
two hundred fifty men subscribed at once,
and soon thereafter, some five hundred more.
How can we possibly go wrong? they thought,
plunking down five dollars for the chance
to start anew along the Susquehanna.
Although it lay three hundred miles away,
and there were rumors that the land belonged
to Pennsylvania or the Iroquois,
they cast their lot with Dyer and his friends.
Joel Munson, skeptical, declined,
but passed along the word to nephew Diah,
who bought and held a half-share, biding time.
Following the birth of their tenth child,
when he’d disposed of almost everything
he owned in Farmington, one autumn morning
Diah packed a hatchet and an axe,
an adze, a saw, an auger, and a mallet,
his firelock, a tinderbox, some shot,
a butcher knife, a skillet and a spoon,
some cornmeal, bread and bacon, applejack,
a woolen blanket and his deed of sale.
Rachel watched him from the dooryard, silent.
[END OF PART ONE]
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