Ella Claggett - a poem (more first drafting, and second drafting, and. . .)

Another first drafting project here, but this one a bit different than the one I posted before. In this case, I typed both first, second, and third drafts on the typewriter before doing an OCR scan on it and then finishing it off on the computer. It felt a most traditional and familiar way of going about things, and thus rather nostalgic. If it were longer than a poem, however, I would have probably stuck to the first draft on typewriter approach so as to avoid physical digital (digits as in fingers, that is) fatigue.

This time round I will first give you the final version in digital form and then include a couple of images of the drafts. The photo at the top of this page?  Read on to figure it out.

The Final Edition

ELLA CLAGGETT 

I see you there each week 
when I come to look for tanagers and kingbirds. 
You stand towering above the knoll stoic and strong
holding the same purple plastic flower 
that's been in your hand since I first saw you years ago. 
I wonder who put that flower there.

You only tell me what is written there on your baseplate: 

Born July 1864 

Died Sept 1902 

Aged 36 years 

You died so young and it seems well-loved. 
Your grand and lofty monument testimony of a loved one’s tears. 
 
Leaving your home in Norway when just a child of ten 
you reach the Battery Park, Castle Garden, to be exact,
before our Lady Liberty was there to welcome you from across the Upper Bay.
For three years score, you leave no trace until you appear again
far off west in El Paso, where you marry a telegrapher from the state of Poe

before you both move off to Hachita, Land of Enchantment, New Mexico. 

Hachita! Dusty, windy, and ever so lonely Hachita! 
What filled your days while he earned his living tapping out dots and dashes 
until you passed five years on when that tapping stilled? 
Was it the fever? The smallpox of 1902? I suppose it doesn't matter. 
You died so young, so far from home, and without heir
and so, I wonder who put that flower there. 

First Draft

The first draft was a thought-up-on-the-fly type written (on the Safari) piece, and since it was a "work" in progress, I did a lot of pen changes and corrections after the first read. 

Who was Ella?

To be honest, I really had no idea. She was just the first and most noticeable gravestone/monument that we'd see whenever we'd enter the local cemetery, which we visit for birding (It's on the New Mexico Birding Trail 2). Her (shown in the photo at the start of this post) monument was made of cast iron and stone, and it looked as if it was that of someone important or well-connected in the community. I had originally guessed she had been some member of a local prominent family, which is why someone was still around to leave that purple plastic flower in the hand of the woman atop the monument. 

In the five years that passed since we first saw her, however, the same flower remained, and no new ones were ever added. I found that a bit odd, so I decided to look her up on FamilySearch.org, and I learned a little about her. Instead of being a local somebody, she was instead a young woman who sailed as a child from Norway to New York. Eventually, she appears in El Paso where she marries a man from Maryland, and they then live in Hachita, NM, a very small and lonely spot, until she dies in 1902.  

I couldn't help but think of the words of my late stepfather, who when my mother suggested their moving to Portland or Seattle, said: "I don't want in the farthest place in the country from where I grew up. (He grew up in Tampa, FL). I wonder if Ella felt the same when she was facing her departure. Leaving the green landscape and ocean-scented homeland for a hot and dusty tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Well, I was projecting a bit, I suppose, but still I wondered.