Bound Brook. Brandywine. Germantown.
Valley Forge. As Stephen Munson spoke
of all he’d seen and done the past three years
while serving in the Continental Army,
his parents listened in intense alarm.
Knowing that the war was far from over
despite the victory at Saratoga,
and that the current military stalemate
meant the outcome could go either way,
Stephen kept his musket at the ready.
A sweltering heat wave swept across the valley.
As danger lurked upon the edges of
Westmoreland, Rachel, with a baby due
in late July, endured a weightiness,
not only from the pregnancy and heat,
but even more so from her husband’s absence.
Believing he had ample time to ride
to Farmington and back, to find a place
where they could all ride out the war in peace,
Diah had left them in the care of Wil.
Wil hid provisions in a hollow log
and left the family livestock free to roam.
He buried stores beneath the floor. He lent
Rebecca Jones his fifteen-foot canoe.
But there was nothing he could do about
the newly-planted sweet corn or the flax
and barley harvests of the coming weeks.
Then, one stifling late-June afternoon,
just as a new moon veiled the blistering sun,
Rachel fetched the birth-stool from the barn.
The title A Joyless Eye is from a line in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “To the Moon.”
COMING SOON - PART THREE, CHAPTER FOUR
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