Counting

From Bridget's small log crib
with her one window, two quilts,
and hard pine bed,
it is 64 steps up to the old well,
the one that dried out
eight days after Catriona's birth.
89 over to the White Owl--
987 from there to the churchyard.
From the outskirts of that wood fence
to Catriona's grave--thirty steps.

The headstone reads only:
"Two years, five months, four days."
She had carved it herself
when Pastor Horner refused.

Two years, five months, four days
with so little sleep.
Catriona screaming.
The men leaving
Bridget with nothing
but Shut that damn kid up.
Nineteen cents to Glenwood Springs.
137 steps to the chemist's
from the train station.
Eighteen cents for the laudanum.
Four doses too many for the child.

And too many to the top
of Crow's Mountain
where the twisted stumps
fight each grain of wind.
And too many to God.

Prostitute. Unmarried. One child, Catriona, who died of overdose of laudanum at two years. Pastor Horner refused to bury the child, so Bridget dug her own grave for Catriona outside of the churchyard. She later left with the child's body in the Pastor's shay. A friend of Billie Rose and Emmy.