Mary Kellogg’s story is really the story of every creative person who asks if their stories are really important and fears showing them to the world.  Fear kills more creative work than any tyrant could. She recently found a poem she wrote in school – it was the first time she had ever used a typewriter, and she remembers that the teacher liked it and commented on it.

But she never showed the poem, or the many others she wrote in secret, to anyone until she showed them to me on the porch of the first Bedlam Farm on a beautiful Autumn afternoon. She was 80 years old. She thought people might laugh at her, she said, or think her foolish.

The experience changed both of us, and as a result, I still tell every student, every aspiring creative, that their stories are important, they need to believe in them.

This poem will be a part of Mary’s third book of poetry – “How We Dance” – to be published shortly by Maria and I – and presented and sold at the first Bedlam Farm Open House during the weekend of June 27-28. It was folded over carefully, there are several doodles on it. Mary wanted to cut them out. We said there was no way.

“Timothy Sweeps On The Meadow” is one of the first poems Mary every wrote, and is speaks of her brilliance and promise at the same time:

 

“Timothy Sweeps On The Meadow”

“Timothy sweeps on the meadow,

wheat grains crack and peal,

harvest deep in yellow corn,

crimson the morn.

Hush the weeping willow,

brooks in merriment call

bring the harvest to the mow

turn the black earth beneath the plow.”

– Mary Kellogg

 

Mary says she will never forget the teacher’s praise for the poem, she says, it was the first encouragement she ever received for her poetry.