Have you seen her?
The woman in white,
Who appears only at night?
Rocks down in the quarry
Make you worry
With tiptoes on the edge
Wouldn't take much now
A push or a nudge
Or even the wind
Could tumble her down
They say she's a specter,
An apparition created by the wind
But her name is Eunice
Grandma said she was
Once kin of mine
But the world was different
When first she stood here
Decades compile
And facts are lost
To the trudges of time
Only a small notice
In the Tri-County Record
Tucked away in the local archives
Is left to tell me of her life
She was a librarian and a wife
Had just turned 30
When she took a 75-foot plunge
Into the Shorewood Hills Stone Quarry
Right on the edge of town
They called it a nerve disorder
But, in 1936, I think that's
A polite was to say suicide
I sit at her grave now
In the family plot
Simple markings
Carved into a smooth stone
Nothing here to suggest
Her turmoil
Or her violent end to life
Under a shaded tree
I hope she can now find peace
Little bird perched on a ledge
Ready to take flight
The woman in white
Slips into the night
Lost to the world again
In memory of Eunice, my great-grandmother's cousin
YOU ARE READING
A Tree Takes Root
Poetrya tree takes root out of the seeds that were sown as deep in the forest a new life is grown
