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Uncle Melvin’s Folly

Townspeople said he did the Devil’s work.
God-fearing Christians plowed and tilled the soil
Six days a week, then put aside their toil
To pray for their eternal souls. “Berserk!”
They shouted, and “Idolater!” His quirk,
The dream his next-door neighbors sought to spoil
By stealth, his burning drive to drill for oil
Where none was known, caused steady folk to jerk.
Night after night he jacked the heavy stones
Dumped in his well, his block-and-tackle powered
By tandem mules. Night after night he drilled
A few feet further till his aching bones
Told him to quit. So what if Brothers glowered
And Sisters sneered? God’s will, he’d be fulfilled.

Aunt Agnes shared his hopes and nursed his pains
With stoicism. Peace of mind and strife
Played hopscotch on the sidewalks of her life.
Her Melvin was a man who used his brains
In concert with his hands. He broke the chains
Binding him to chores. Oil dripped from her knife
At the pond, and (not because she was his wife)
She nodded at the rings, the rainbow stains.
She thought of Jörgensen, whose Wireless claim
Was jumped, whose props were knocked from under
Him. They languished in the Philippines,
Weathered the insurrection. Nobel fame
Aside, their fortune was denied. Thunder-
Struck, they were reduced to eating beans.

Agnes cooked and washed and milked the cow
While Melvin plowed by day and slogged the night
Clearing out his well by lantern light
And drilling a few feet more. She wondered how
She would have handled wealth if now
She was the widow of a famous man so bright
He dodged the great Marconi’s oversight
Without a shot being fired across his bow.
For fifty years she kept her man abeam
Until at ninety-six, while pounding nails
In shingles on the roof, he dropped, his dream
Fulfilled, a Pharaoh carried up the Nile
Reclined on lion skins and ermine tails.
It was the only time she saw him smile.


[Published in Measure: A Journal of Metrical Verse]

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