Sweet Mary Louretta Poem, by pldabbs, at My poetic side

I was born and raised near the flatlands that lay

‘Tween the Choctaw and the Cherokee tribe

But my life just got started when I met one day

A young girl so purty it’s hard to describe

Sweet Mary Louretta was just 9 years old

When her beauty first caused me unrest

Cause I was 18 but I knew deep inside

That she’d leave her nest to become my sweet bride

Sweet Mary Louretta you’re too young today

But dimples and dolls all too soon fade away

For 10 years I’ll wait and then when you are grown

I’m hopin’ you’ll let me come take you on home

Well pits turn to peaches and fawns become deer

And Mary grew into a queen

She went for the guys who were tall and sincere

And so we got married when she turned 18

We had 6 kids a coming and 5 kids at last

But 2 died ahead of their time (that makes 9)

The others grew up, got married, and were never outclassed

In my humble opinion they turned out real fine

Sweet Mary Louretta beside me you’ll lay

I had to leave early and you had to stay

For 10 years you waited and lived all alone

I’m so glad he let me come take you back home

Well legends get started and stories get told

Oh I wish you could hear me tell some

Like the priest I outsmarted, our Mercedes of gold

And the Sonoma mansion at 941

Well they sold off the mansion when I passed away

There were too many fond memories

But the children all loved you and asked you to stay

‘Til I was allowed to come take you away

Sweet Mary Louretta beside me you’ll lay

I had to leave early and you had to stay

For 10 years you waited and lived all alone

I’m so glad He let me come take you back home

A smile of silver, a heart made of gold

A sweet disposition for one

You kids will all miss her but let go of the old

Cause we’re starting a new life and won’t we have fun

Sweet Mary Louretta is smiling today

We had to leave early, you kids had to stay

Don’t get tired of waitin’, stay close to the phone

We’ll soon call long distance and invite you all home

Don’t get tired of waitin’, stay close to the phone

We’re calling long distance, get ready to go

c aaron

Author: pldabbs (Pseudonym) ( Offline)
Published: October 29th, 2017 16:29
Comment from author about the poem: My grandmother (Nana) died in 1980. She was in Santa Rosa, CA, and I was out at school in Provo, Utah. When I got news of her death, I immediately made the decision to go out to Santa Rosa for the funeral. I owned a VW bus at the time. I loaded my stuff into the van, including my guitar, and started off for California. When I began to drive I had a feeling that I should write a song to sing at Nana’s funeral. I began to think of some words, then began writing them down as I was driving. I had a note pad I used and put it on my knee. As I wrote the words, I put the words to music as I was driving. I would stop once in a while and work out a guitar part and the melody along the way. At various times during the song, I could feel the presence of Papa (my granddad, her husband of 60 years when he had died in 1970) as if he were dictating to me his feelings and the words he would like sung at her funeral…a tribute to her from her husband. When I reached Santa Rosa I quickly stopped (I don’t remember where) and put the whole song together, so it made sense and had some sort of coherence. When I first got together with my family I asked two of my cousins who both had very nice voices to get together with me so we could work out some harmonies and they worked out some harmonies rather quickly. With a little work we put the song together so we could sing it at her funeral, so three of her grandchildren were able to sing a tribute to their grandmother at her funeral. 37 years have passed, but the song still carries some very sentimental feelings for me. Her full name was Mary Eunice Louretta Ashmore. Eunice was kind of a hard name to work with in a song, so I used her given name and her second name Mary Louretta as the title and the name used in the music. (she was actually known by most as ‘Eunice’.)
Category: Family
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