QUAKER BLOSSOMS

 

                    I

 

A Friend was Richard Galloway,

But Samuel, his great grandson,

Built Tulip Hill on the slave trade—

Estate so proudly Georgian.

 

Nearby, upon the burial ground,

George Fox proclaimed the Inner Light

To those whose shriveled corpses now

Lie vacant where his words took flight.

 

                    II

 

Ten thousand years or more ago,

The first Algonquin settled here

Beside the sprawling Bay we know,

With glaciers melting on their heels.

 

They signed a pact with colonists,

Beneath a spreading Tulip Tree—

Today where Saint John’s College lists

The World’s Great Books for us to read.

 

                    III

 

In childhood I explored the hill

My father built our home upon;

Where Tulip Poplars’ flowers filled

Their boughs and dropped across the lawn.

 

How sweet it was to contemplate

Their petals cupped and yellow-green,

With red and orange glowing faint,

Like passions fading from past scenes!

 

                    IV

 

Employed to search out, sort and track

Old records at your next request,

I browsed an Archives’ moldered stacks

Of rags and wood to pages pressed.

 

Without direction, like sere leaves

That tumble through autumnal fields,

I turned life’s pages uselessly—

What harvest could such idling yield?

 

                    V

 

From what I read between the lines

Of Quaker Records, I will quote

The whispers of the wind that winds

Its circuits through old Poplar groves:

 

What does it mean? A child squats low,

And lifts one fallen flower to view

Its pigments in the dew drops’ glow,

Reflecting vistas strange and new.