Marienstadt

Mary’s Town
That’s what they named it
German Catholics
Promised land that was fertile

Green

Farmland

A place as beautiful and welcoming as their homeland

Instead they found massive hemlocks and white pine

Dense

Dark

Uninhabitable

Unforgiving

But they stayed

Built a church

A brewery

And eventually discovered their future 

In carbon

The people of Marienstadt measured time by the church bells

And the factory whistle

They built tidy houses

And proclaimed that it was

A good life

The little boy was called to the fence that separated

His grandfather’s store

From the factory

Dollars for lunch for these men

He ran back to fetch them food

 

Years later he

Stood in that place 

on Christmas Eve

The store long gone

The factory, mostly empty

And watched the wind carry snow 

across the cracked pavement, 

Bend the tall grass 

that hid the abandoned railroad tracks

He remembered 

his grandmother’s rooms on the second floor

And his mother 

sitting on the porch, 

a beautiful bird perched on her shoulder

By Bekki Titchner