She takes one last glance
And someone grips her hand, tight as a lock.
Jesse, the first brother.
Some years later (though of course
She doesn’t know this) she will marry
The second brother, Eli.
They will call their firstborn Jesse.
They had no choice. (He pulls her along,
Away from England.) People hated them.
Their names scrawled blackly
In the Poor Law book, like the names
Of naughty children. Bad children
Who could afford neither petticoats nor potatoes.
When Jesse came home with news
Of the Saints, and their promises,
It wasn’t long before she dipped, and gladly.
A baptism, a birth. They pulled her sopping
From the water and she kept laughing
Until Jesse (or was it Eli?) slapped her face.
God, said Jesse, had called them home.
And, God being good, He would provide.
No more scratching a living, no more handouts.
(Cold hands, cold hearts.)
The new country will embrace them.
The sun will always shine.
There will be land enough for everyone,
A little piece of God on earth.
Her last glance takes in the dirty dock,
The muscly knots of people pushing.
A sea of cold grey eyes.
The wind blows the spitting rain
Onto her face with a sting, like a slap.
When she steps aboard,
The earth gives way beneath her.
The planets spin and re-arrange themselves
And the ship begins to move.
[The Bradney family left Liverpool dock on 19th April 1872 and arrived in New York on 1st June. By 1880, the family had settled in Paradise, Cache County, Utah]