Sunday in Salem

While in my graduate poetry seminar I was required to write a lengthy poem around a series of family photographs. The poem turned into a journey through my family ancestry. As part of that poem, I wrote a sestina about the subject matter of my last post-- my ancestors who were hanged for being "witches".

For those who do not know, a sestina is a poetic form and a somewhat complicated one. The poem consists of six stanzas of six lines each. The ending word of each line must be repeated according to a certain pattern in the subsequent stanzas. The poem concludes with three lines which must contain all six words. My teacher was fond of taking forms and changing them. Hence, the following poem does not repeat the words at the end of the lines but embeds them in the line. The proper pattern of repetition is followed.

My sestina is the product of a beginner. Still, its subject matter is important to me so I post it here.

Sunday in Salem

There were warm days, no doubt,

but I can only imagine the cold.

Stripped, scarecrow trees. Green leaves.

A stark memory none could remember.

Barren as puritan souls

feeding like ravens on carrion fear.

Did fear prompt those children’s taunts?

No doubt it was something more.

Remember the smell of importance

mixing with wet leaves.

Warm attention on a cold night.

They traded a soul for fifteen minutes of fame.

He preached soul's salvation—

Rev. Parris—vendor of fear and failure.

Happily made his fire with tinder of doubt

while the congregation remembered the cries

of teenagers, cries that frightened away

whatever reason remained in the cold winter.

Sarah stormed into that cold on Sacrament Sunday.

Her sister, Rebecca, kindest soul, accused.

They feared the devil himself. Sarah’s rebuke

gripped the village and no doubt they would

remember her outrage and finger her next.

Truth now brittle as December leaves.

The spectral evidence leaves little doubt

Sarah, Mary, and Rebecca chained in a cold

prison cell, a rope waiting for any who doubt

the teen’s fear, shrinking from specters

who pinched and strangled their souls.

None could remember a time before witches.

Sarah remembered years after the hanging

and cried for justice, to leave a mark on history

like the marks on the cold necks of 19 women.

Three sovereigns the judgment of the puritan souls

whose hysteria and fear, fed by the words

of young girls, who, other times, they would surely doubt.

Before leaving the story of fear

the poet remembered today’s puritan souls

who never doubt the other’s sin.