Three Pages

In the history of my country as yet unwritten,

The woman who fell from the deck of the Mayflower

As it rode at anchor off the shore of the New World

Gets more than the single sentence

William Bradford allows her in his narrative

Of Plymouth Plantation. I can understand

Why he wouldn’t have lingered on her even though—

As a note in my edition informs me—she happened

To be his wife. His book, after all, is about

The community he helped to lead, not about himself.

I can understand why he didn’t mention the fact

That the woman—the note also informs me—

May have cast herself in the water. His book, after all,

Is about the triumph of hope over adversity

With the aid of divine assistance, not about despair.

All the more reason to give her at least a page

In the history of the country as yet unwritten

That tries to imagine what she must have suffered

When saying good-bye to many dear ones

Not to be seen again. And how lonely she felt

When crossing the sea with people who considered

The waves of grief that swept over her

As evidence of ingratitude for the promised land

Waiting for them at the end of the voyage.

And then to arrive at last at the edge of a wilderness

Where no one was waiting to welcome them,

No hearth fire where they could assure themselves

That the worst was at last behind them.

And beside this extra page, there’s room in the history

As yet unwritten for a page on the granddaughter

Of the woman’s niece, whose letter to a cousin in Boston,

Unearthed only recently, describes her efforts

To persuade her husband not to join the wagon train

About to roll west. Why can’t we stay here,

She wants to know, here where our parents

Made a good life, worshipping as they pleased?

Why must we leave the land grown dear to us

For the sake of a few more inches of topsoil

And fewer stones to be hauled from fields

To make plowing easier? A page that dwells

On her effort, when overruled, to set aside

Resentment and move on. And decades later,

When their children ask them what they remember

Most vividly from their westward trek, the account includes

Not only her seconding of her husband’s story

Of the sight from a hill, near sundown,

Of the green dell they were destined to farm,

But a page describing what she doesn’t mention:

Their wagon’s passing, one rainy morning,

In the middle of nowhere, a makeshift grave

With its wooden cross already listing

And no one to clear the weeds away.