ANNALS OF THE DEAR UNKNOWN - PART THREE, CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

 

 

 

Her Cabin’d, Ample Spirit

Stephen found and brought back Doctor Sprague,
who breathed his patient’s vein, to no avail.
Rachel Tyler Munson, forty-two,
had reached the limits of her breeding life.
As June progressed into July, she passed.
The turmoil in the Munson house was such
that Wil and Stephen barely could control
the desperate keening of the younger ones.
Rebecca volunteered to nurse Benoni,
to which expedient Wil acquiesced.

Besides the doctor, Stephen Munson brought
frightful news of an immense flotilla
of Tories, Loyalists and Iroquois
descending the Susquehanna towards Westmoreland.
Families were flocking to the forts,
and Wil knew they would need to leave before
a proper funeral could be arranged.
His Fort Brown friends helped Wil dig Rachel’s grave
in the burial ground along the riverbank,
and built for her a rough-hewn pine box coffin.

They used the white and sky-blue coverlet
for Rachel Tyler Munson’s shroud, but some
was cut away for a blanket for Benoni.
Wil and Stephen set a sandstone rock
to mark the burial site until such time
as they’d return with Diah to retrieve
their baby brother from Rebecca Jones;
when they would place a proper death’s-head marker
for the one whose pious psalm-tune lullabies
would sing forever in their broken hearts. 

The title of the chapter Her Cabin’d, Ample Spirit comes from the poem “Requiescat” by Matthew Arnold.

 

COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER SIX