Laura at the Typewriter

Springfield, Missouri (1910)

Almanzo’s oxen plow the cornfield

as I sit at the window

my fingers tap, tap, tapping

on the brand new typewriter

Ma gave me.

Pa’s fiddle rests on the mantle

with memories of sweet melodies

next to roaring fires

trying to keep warm in the long winter

as the howling wolves circled

our small cabin in the woods.

I take a bite of Ma’s cinnamon apple pie

thinking back to the hardtack

and bean soup on the prairie

as Pa hunted the vast landscape

for our next meal that never seemed to come.

I’m writing of the smallpox,

of the moving from house to house,

never really having a home,

of Mr. Edwards and his whiskey-soaked laugh,

of Mary’s beautiful blue eyes losing their glimmer,

of my baby boy’s blank gravestone—

my child taken by one of many fires

I survived.

Almanzo brings the oxen back to the barn

waving and smiling at me

as I plow on.

Campbell Jenkins