Wyethstown

4. Wyethstown
From the standpoint of a woman coming of age in the Boston Valley area of Western New York, ca. 1850

My family came and settled down, year of thirty-four,
Homesteaded near Wyethstown, your father owned the store.
We played together, laughed and cried, since we were very young,
Over hill and meadowside, of golden-green we’d run.
And there was noone to say I’d regret the day
That the railroad come.

They built the railroad by us when you were twenty-two.
You quit your job at Wyeth’s farm to help them put it through.
In summer sun I’d watch you sink the steel into the ground,
Then we’d walk together in the woods on the ridge above the town.
The summer that the railroad come, and I loved you.

Now Wyethstown is weathered-in, all blanketed with snow.
Alone I read your letter in the embers dyin’ glow.
I’ll wait a winter while you court your girls of quality
By sidewalk-light in New Orleans, and never think of me.
And I never thought, when the railroad come, you’d ever go.

Things aren’t much changed in Wyethstown since you left that day.
With six long summers come and gone there‘s little more to say.
But Sunday after church we cross the golden fields of hay
And climb the ridge above the town, to wait along the right of way,
For the white smoke comin’ risin’ in the sky,
Blue, as your son’s eyes followin’ the train, as it goes by.