Midwife Missouri

 Midwife

"And because the midwives feared God, He gave them families."

Exodus 1:21.

John Clare Stokes

They were the bone lean days following

the late great war of Northern invasion,

the long drawn death thro's of a nation

but for the love of Laura, Sherman sparing,

his terrible swift sword taking Florida's life,

Georgia feeling the ravages of spurned victory,

the orange blossom never to fall into his bands of savagery. 

Into these times of lean came to be a midwife.

Sabbath days at Hopewell Primitive Rev.Eubanks would pray,

For Charles, Eliza, Willey and Missouri's little Cauley

And that day on the bare toes he would step lightly,

for these famished souls had enough already of hell and misery.

Too far away to send for Doc Ives in the first horseless Buick,

Twenty-five miles from Lake City an ocean-like eternity

by mule,through sand way up and lost on the Suwannee, 

but not the midwife the labor cries she would seek.

Beside the birthing beds from Benton to Suwannee Shoals,

Missouri the unmarried midwife was to all as a  mother,

her pleasurable sins so easily forgiven her,

Missouri Wheeler by whose hand came so many souls.

And in the dead of night along the old Suwannee river flowing,

The new mother blesses the midwife who they could not pay,

But the wages for Missoui the men found a way,

Script beyond the folding,more precious than any money golden.

As told not literal, but poetic.