Vol. III Fall/Winter 

2008-2009   

Poetry written by Cheltenham Township Adult School Workshop Participants      

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Poems
in this issue

Linda Barrett

Ruth Deming

Jan Felgoise

Marion Fox

Angela Glover

Jan Goldman

Maxine Hobbs

Grace Lynch

Marvin Thall

 

Edited by Kristine Grow

For more information about
 writing workshops offered by
the Cheltenham Township Adult School, contact:

Cheltenham Township Adult School
1414 Panther Road
Wyncote, PA 19095
Phone: 215-887-1720

 

Marvin Thall 

One of the Gone

 

George was first in war, first in peace,

first in the hearts of his countrymen.

He owned a huge Virginia plantation,

worked by hundreds of field slaves.

 

In their Mount Vernon mansion,

he and Martha were attended by house slaves,

politely called servants, like Betty, a seamstress

wedded to Andrew Judge, their indentured tailor--

 

Betty and Andrew birthed a daughter, they named Oney.

Oney Judge at 16, was sent with six other servants,

to the New York residence of the first President;

Oney became the personal body servant of the First Lady.

 

Bright and competent, Oney was a trusted confidante

for the First Lady. Six years later, the Washingtons

moved to Philadelphia, the Nation's new Capitol--

Oney became aware of alarming news--

 

She had been promised as a surprise wedding present

to Martha's granddaughter, Eliza Custis, in Virginia.

Oney turned to freemen and abolitionists in the City,

who planned her escape. While the family dined,

 

Oney was hidden by her friends,

and put on a ship to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The President enraged at this ungrateful wench--

hadn't she been treated like a family member?

 

Oney's younger sister, Delphy, was made the wedding gift;

but George Washington continued to hunt Oney,

using slavecatchers, cajolement, and the Law to get her.

Oney was a child when Andrew Judge fled from servitude;

 

Now, like her father, she was one of the gone.

 

Oney married a free-black sailor, John Staines,

 and raised three children. She taught herself to read.

The 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, signed by President Washington,

made Oney live her last 52 years as a fugitive.

 

Until her death in Greenland, New Hampshire, February 25, 1848,

Oney Judge, engaged in her community,

a poor freewoman, proud of her struggle with the famous President.

 

We remember her as one of the countless gone.

 

 

 

 

A Plague on Both Your Houses

 

My poems won't steal or plagiarize,

but there may be occasional lies.

Romeo & Juliet gave me this title,

playing  plague against plagiarize,

 

and we may wish the plague

on the huge banking and auto houses,

whose greedy mistakes loused

up the economy--they now beg us for aid--

 

and about plagiarize, it's not wise

to use another's thoughts without permission,

but to borrow or copy from poets past,

is quite alright in the prosody tradition,

 

since the Bard, Whitman, Dickinson, Frost

and the others are dear departed,

we may copy them with respect, at no cost,

as long as we obey the Bard's advice:

 

This above all: to thine own self be true,

and it must follow as the night the day,

Thou canst then not be false to any man.

  

 

 

 

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."

Hannah Arendt 

 

Editor's note:
  At
this time, The Tookany Review is accepting only the work of writers who are enrolled or have been enrolled in Cheltenham Adult School writing workshops.

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