July 7, 1890

Yesterday was the 119 anniversary of the tornado that struck Fargo that killed seven children from the McCarty family. The following poem is the first poem in my manuscript, Fargo, 1957


Terra

The first tornado to strike Fargo happened on July 7, 1890. Although the city was heavily damaged, the only deaths were seven children belonging to the recently widowed Rose. McCarty, who lived in a house at Ninth Avenue and Fifth Street North. Mrs. McCarty, who was pregnant, survived as did her two other children who were in Hunter, N.D. at the time of the storm. One year later, on July 19, 1891, 8-year-old Agnes died from what was thought to be the shock of the loss.

Gone. The last anyone saw of them
was as the gnarled priest
sprinkled blessed water into each open hole,
laid out, side-by-side
before they were filled with children—
washed and cleaned from the coal dust.
They disappeared beneath a tumble
of disturbed sod. What better graves,
everyone thought, than a coal bin
under the collapsed pantry?

Gone—
like that. And six hundred people
in unison mourned them
and helped them to their deep trenches.
One by one they let them down.
First, it was Rose Isabella
laid in her place. Next to her, they put
Mary Alice, then Frances Anna,
then James Francis, Justin, Josephine,
and last, in the smallest coffin of all,
Luella.

And when it was done,
there was not a trace left—
only names inscribed in
a descending pattern
beneath the inscription
JAMES MCCARTY
who died three weeks before.
Seven children’s names—
and the mind boggles
when one reaches the bottom
of the stone pillar.

The clerics who stood by during the burying
in their lace cottas dirty with
grave dirt and sawdust
no doubt pondered impermanence as they knelt in place,
gazing into the void, fingering
their breviaries and rosaries. And so it is.
We are temporary—
the same way clouds are
when they enter the sky, grow full
as our guts, unleash what they have and then
dissipate. Search as we might—
gazing up with our expectant faces
we find no traces there
in the sky we trust in
and ponder ourselves
with the same awe one gives to the divine
mystery after every other solution fails.

We look downward too, into the grass,
our faces unable to find even one trace of them
except there—
in the overgrown grass
where the white footstones mark
strange dents in the earth
and not one thing more.

Maybe they never were, we wonder.
Maybe they never lived. Maybe
it’s all fantasy—
a tale they tell us when the weather
grows ominous and we shudder
at the first sound of thunder.
It could never happen, we conclude,
not seven of them, gone beneath
the weight of wreckage
knocked atop them by
something so basic and common as
wind. There’s not an ounce of proof anyway—
every footprint , every tear
has been washed into the grass by
some long-ago rain.
All we have are letters
inscribed into pale gray granite,
and the simple curves of the death date.

Maybe, they never were.
Or maybe, they were
and they have in fact
become what we know we are
beneath our arrogance at death.
Maybe it’s true of them—
terra es, terram ibis—
as it is for all of us.