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Charles V. Chambila
I missed my alarms and slept in,
I have had people in dreams,
The friendly kind, but weird they existed,
I would rather keep my mind shut,
Than open the doors to my home
My mind is my mansion,
It only becomes a home when I walk in,
Open the doors,
“Give them you heart and trust”
Excuse me what did you say?
My heart and trust?
The purse and luxury is their pursuit,
Not my heart and trust,
The walls protecting my mansion are high up,
I would like to keep that way,
Is it me or the fear talking?
Nothing in life is alien to you:
I was a penniless girl from Summum
Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
All the houses stood before me with closed doors
And drawn shades—I was barred out;
I had no place or part in any of them.
And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
A castle of stone ’mid walks and gardens
With workmen about the place on guard
And the County and State upholding it
For its lordly owner, full of pride.
I was so hungry I had a vision:
I saw a giant pair of scissors
Dip from the sky, like the beam of a dredge,
And cut the house in two like a curtain.
But at the “Commercial” I saw a man
I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
How proud my mother was of the mansion
How proud of father’s rise in the world!
And how my father loved and watched us,
And guarded our happiness.
But I believe the house was a curse,
For father’s fortune was little beside it;
And when my husband found he had married
A girl who was really poor,
He taunted me with the spires,
And called the house a fraud on the world,
A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry not to be had;