Highways and Byways: Dear Friends and Gentle People

For Stephen Foster

By Maik Strosahl

Stephen Foster was a creative genius. In his early years, he taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute, and piano with no formal instruction. At twenty, he started writing songs that have survived since the 1840s to this day. One of his first successful songs was “Oh! Susanna,” which was sung by 49ers panning for gold and was still belted out by out-of-tune 1970s grade schoolers such as myself. In his short 37 years on this earth, he wrote many others, including “Camptown Races”; the Kentucky state song, “My Old Kentucky Home”; and Florida’s state song, “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)” – a song that Ray Charles recorded a version of for his first pop hit, “Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ’Bout That River)."
    Yet, deep into the years of the Civil War, Foster was a pauper living in New York City. When he died, he had a war scrip cent for every year of his life in his wallet and a scribbled note in his pocket that read, “Dear Friends and Gentle People.” Some speculate it was another idea for a song that never got written.
    His death was tragic. His writing partner found him still alive but lying in a pool of blood, naked on the floor, supposedly cut in the neck by his washbasin, but many believe he was attempting suicide. He died three days later.
    One of his most popular tunes, “Beautiful Dreamer," was published shortly after his death.
    My piece is an attempt to address the note in his pocket in the tradition of poet Edgar Lee Master’s “Spoon River Anthology,” incorporating a voice from the dead – or rather, in this case, a voice from the throes of death.

Dear Friends and Gentle People

I’m done for.
Truth be
I’ve nothing left to offer,
37 cents in scrip
tucked in my wallet on the dresser
as I gasp naked and
pouring out across this rug.

And you could blame this fever,
a sharpness in a washbasin,
a wayward knife,
or you could curse
this goddam war
tearing our land apart:
brother from mother from
uncle and cousin
divided over ideals,
aiming lead missives
toward illiterate eyes,
bullets through
stopped-up ears

that no longer hear the music,
light verse offered
to soothe the soul,
and what’s a poor tunesmith to do
when that’s all I had to offer,
the songs of a dreamer
pouring out of my soul,
gathering in a pool,
staining one more melody
into the deaf wood
of a hard floor.

Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.