Last Night of Seventeen

I first called this poem “Yound Days” But one night when I swept the school house out
I found this on her tablet written before she left
fifty years ago
Last Night of Seventeen
So take it for the Title
She wrote the name for my poem fifty years ago

When prairie winds blow as the winter goes by
She sleeps there alone without me
And my fiddle keeps singing of a long ago summer
like the leaves in the cottonwood tree
Tho youth has gone by
And the young days are gone
Then she is here- with my fiddle and me
And we still are singing of the bright days of summer
The young girl and the fiddle and me

The last days of summer
When i was a young man
And her daddy asked me “when are you gunna wed?
I looked away across the snow, and I told him-
and i might-
“I’ll get a fiddle instead.”

Now the years have gone by
And the young days are gone
And the fiddle still hangs around with me
And the young girl is sleeping alone on the prairie
in her grave by the cottonwood tree

I remember the day and the cranky old man
and the girl who was still seventeen
and my fiddle keeps singing of a long ago summer
of school days and the sunshine and beam
Oh the years have gone by and the young days are gone
there are the songs on the prairie for me and the young girl is sleeping
thirty years along by the cottonwood tree

This was a pupil of mine when I was a teacher. I was her teacher fifty years ago.