Esther Moore*
Esther was
renowned for nursing.
her midwifery
spurred neighbours
to name their
children after her.
a widow for a
year by 32,
she remarried
to Alexander Brown Jr.
and had three
more children.
a story starts
whenever we start it.
it begins for
us wherever our point
of attention
is. the same with endings.
so the first
thing you should know
about Esther
is that her parents
owned a Dublin
shoe factory.
the second
thing you should know
is that she
was a force unconfined.
thirdly, that
at 21, she believed in love.
fourthly in a
down-low style of
mid-1800s,
despite being a governess
Esther
fraternized with workers.
she persuaded
one to teach her on the sly
to make shoes.
then an arranged marriage
paired poorly
with "suitable" suitor, Mitton
so one windy
winter night, January 28,
1847, she and
John Crawford escaped,
eloped to
Kinawley in County Fermanagh.
time passed,
as it's liable to intractably do.
after her
passage to the port of Montreal
to her
shoemaker, against the rapids
she rejoined
him. in seven years
they made
children of Quebec.
the fourth,
six months in her belly.
October 19th,
1856, hunting deer
along the
Ottawa River at
Portage du Fort, John tumbled in.
he must have
drowned hauling
his wounded
buck home. come May,
a body without
knowledge, came ashore.
authorities
summoned Esther
to identify
it. from the distance
of a roadside
ruff of cedar and pine
she turned
away and said, it’s him.
they said, come
closer. how can ya
be sure from way over
there?
she replied, I made his boots.
*daughter of Graciella Caskello and George Moor moved from Dublin, ultimately to become my great x3 grandmother
No comments:
Post a Comment