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Poem: "Jed Kane"

The Gauley mail was overdue
When Jed who was to drive it through
Cheat Mountain Pass to Staunton Run
Got special word from Washington– 
In which a postal clerk inquired
Why Mr. Kane who had been hired
To drive the course at post haste rate
Was not in yet, though three months late.

And now on a high-glazed marble wall
In the postal building Jed Kane’s scrawl
Hangs framed in silver: “Respected Sir,
You ask the reason and this be her– 

If the gable end blowed out of hell
Straight into the drifts of a snow that fell
Last fall on the ram’s horn point of Cheat
It would take till Easter for brimstone heat
To melt a horsepath.  So I remain.
Your obdt. svt., Jedson Kane.”
					

Source: Louise McNeill, Gauley Mountain (1939).


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