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Annie
She looks at me tentatively from her oval frame,
the child in white voile and blue ribbons,
whose home for fifteen years
was on the sea
Jirah Perry off Clark's Point, New Bedford William Bradford
(Annie Chase on board from 1875 to 1879 and from 1879 to 1883.
Jireh Perry
in that tiny space – six by ten perhaps
alloted to the captain and his wife;
Her life encompassed by a bunk,
a trunk, a bible
the smell of whale oil
and the taste of hardtack
spread with a thin film of New England jam.
She knew the grass green
and mountain purple of the oceans,
the smell of Peruvian grapes,
the dusty shudder of earthquakes,
and the humid roar of hurricanes
She heard the languid beat
of African drums,
and knew mutiny,
and loneliness
and fear.
She nurtured us from our births,
and spoke of it only to us,
only in bedtime stories
only until she thought
we wouldn't remember them.
But we did.
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