The Ducking Stool

The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon

Heat in the grass, heat in the fluffed and sexual seed tips,

I saw this punishment given to one Betsey

the pickup rocking through the Ozarks, I don't belong here,

wife of John Tucker who by ye violence

shouldn't touch with tenderness my lover, licking

of her tongue has made his house

coffee on her lips. I'm too close when the truck

and ye neighborhood uncomfortable.

pitches to stop at the riverbank, and she pulls back,

She was taken to ye pond near where I am sojourning

chucks the styrofoam out the window, saying no,

by ye officer who was joined by ye Magistrate

no cops out here. The rapids squabble as we launch.

and ye Minister Mr. Cotton who had frequently

I'm thinking of Grandma 400 miles away, who, though the doctor

admonished her and a large number of People.

said, you'll die if you smoke, still manages to breathe

They had a machine for ye purpose.

long after she bribed the nursing home aide to buy her one

At ye end of ye longer arm is fixed a stool

goodbye taste. Her chest rises as rapids pivot the canoe

upon which sd Betsey was fastened by cords,

so it runs sideways into the deeper brown pool and

her gown tied fast around her feete. The Machine was then moved

into the log that crosses the falls. The boat flips so slowly

up to ye edge of ye pond, ye Rope was slackened

I think at every instant maybe it isn't happening

by ye officer and ye woman was allowed to go down

until I plunge under for the space of a minute

under ye water for ye space of half a minute.

and, opening my eyes, see the brown violence

Betsey had a stout stomach, and would not yield

that spins all of me in somersaults at the prow.

until she had allowed herself to be ducked 5 several times.

I dive up, bump my skull on the log, thrash, fail. I'm under

At length she cried piteously, Let me go

too long already, but try anyway, break

Let me go, by God's help I'll sin no more.

into air, screaming to be alive, as my lover

Then they drew back ye Machine, untied ye Ropes

doesn't yet let herself move toward me,

and let her walk home in her wetted clothes

and Grandma stops breathing, and I don't,

a hopefully penitent woman.

quaking in my wetted clothes, know.

Author's Note: The account of the ducking comes from Curious Punishments of Bygone Days , by Alice Morse Earle (Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1896). Earle is quoting "a letter said to have been written to Governor Endicott, of Massachusetts, in 1634 by one Thomas Hartley, from Hungars Parish, Virginia."