Storyteller of the Week

Peggy Trojan

 

 

 Peggy Trojan and her husband David

Peggy Trojan published her first poem in 2010 when she was seventy-seven years old and has since been published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies.

Peggy’s first chapbook, Everyday Love, a collection of poems about her parents, placed second in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets chapbook contest in 2015 and was a finalist for the Northeast Minnesota Book Awards.

Her chapbook, Homefront: Childhood Memories of WWII, was a finalist for the Helen K Chapbook contest in 2014, then published by Evening Street Press in 2015. Peggy’s full-length collection, Essence, won publication by Portage Press, also in 2015.

Her third chapbook, Free Range Kids, also published by Evening Street Press, won the Helen Kay Chapbook contest in 2017. In 2018, Peggy compiled her poems into a 236-page anthology called All That Matters so her family and friends could have most of her work in one book.

Peggy’s fourth chapbook, River, recounts her life of growing old with her husband, David, and how their genteel existence was interrupted by his shocking diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia. David finally passed away in September 2020. River was recognized by the Wisconsin Library Association as an Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2021 and won second place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ chapbook contest.

In PA, Peggy pays tribute to her father, Wayne Lundeen, who lived a very full life and greatly influenced her with his strong values and actions. It placed second in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ chapbook contest for 2022. It also placed Honorable Mention in the Northeast Minnesota Book Award.

Peggy still resides in the peaceful country home she and David, her father, and family built on a tributary of the Brule River in Brule, Wisconsin. Her eldest daughter, Mary, lives with her now. Her books are available on Amazon.

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Peggy Trojan is my inspiration. Despite suffering from macular degeneration at the age of 90, she still enjoys writing and publishing poetry. I have been a fan of Peggy’s since I read her first poem on Your Daily Poem in 2013. I am impressed with her talent for telling the story of her family so as the reader I feel they are my family. Her poems are powerful and poignant. Her writing is direct and honest and she epitomizes what this site stands for: individuality and creativity. I am proud to publish these poems that show Peggy as a strong independent woman.

PHOTOGRAPH

Posed in the yard
Sophie, sitting, holding baby Ellen
husband Victor standing
wearing his suit jacket and good hat
hand on Wayne’s shoulder.

My father, age four,
shirt buttoned to the neck
hair slicked, pants safety pinned
hiding a bit behind his mother’s arm.
He looks intently into the camera lens
to what’s coming.
Past losing his right eye when he is ten
past the 1918 Hinckley fire
that takes their house and cows
and burns his pet ram black,
into the most terrible part
when his dad dies
leaving all eight of them and Sophie
on the farm with no aid or money.
He is already sad.

He can’t see just a little bit farther.
Far enough to see me
standing on the porch, waving.

GOOD OLD JOE

Pa bought Joe thinking
he was a purebred Black Lab.
Soon it became clear there
had been a scandal in the family.
His hair grew long and curly,
his build stocky.
He was a quiet dog,
patient, intelligent, responsive.
Always ready to go exploring,
waiting at the mailbox
for the school bus.
Over the years his fear
of loud noise grew-
guns and thunderstorms
caused him to quiver
and come into the house,
once ripping our screen door
to shreds in his panic.

In old age he got distemper
with no cure known.
Pa took his gun and called,
twice because the gun
was obvious, and walked
with him to the far edge
of the field, by the woods.
The first shot missed
as tears blurred Pa’s vision.
Joe sat still and waited
for the second.

ORCHARD

Ma’s and Pa’s ashes
rest under the wide spruce
on the way to the orchard,
shielded by a common field stone,
names on a small brass plaque.
I greet them as I hurry by.

Though my father did not believe
in life after death,
he materializes quickly.
Today, when invited,
they join me
as easy as sunlight.

“Oh,” I hear my mother sigh,
white hair blending with blossoms.
My father slows by the plum,
saying, “You could prune this branch.”

We linger,
marveling at cherry flower,
high bush cranberries,
exploding clouds of pale bloom.

I leave them circled in Spring.
She, snapping a small sprig to smell,
he, watching her, smiling.  

PEN PAL

The Evening Telegram printed
names of soldiers wanting mail.
Mother chose Robert Smith.
Wrote, in teacher’s Palmer script,
of ordinary happenings
in our little Wisconsin town.
What birds were at the feeder,
the fox or deer she saw,
how much snow fell,
hoping he was doing well.
Nothing sad or troublesome.
She wrote often, all during the war.

Sometimes, a letter thanking her
would come from a distant battle place,
Italy, or France maybe,
with the military post mark.
A.P.O. 45, New York,
censored by army examiner.

War ended in August, ‘45.
The following Christmas,
a card arrived
showing a black man
sitting by the decorated tree.
He was afraid, if she knew,
letters “from home” would stop.

It made no difference, she confided.
He was fighting for us all,
and she was his pal.
For more than fifty years,
his greeting was saved in her shoebox
with anniversary cards from Pa,
and fancy old Valentines.

They didn’t write much longer.
He was back home then,
and that war was over.

THE PRO

Ninety-seven,
he needed a cane to walk,
also someone to paddle
so he could concentrate on fishing.
Leo offered to take
him to Lake Superior
to fish from the shore,
not wanting to chance a canoe.
Drove to get bait,
Pa having determined
from years of experience,
it was a leech kind of day.

At the lake,
settled into a lawn chair
between other hopefuls
lining the bank.
Pa, from years of experience,
decided it was actually
a Rapala kind of day,
and changed bait.
His first cast bent
the rod way over,
convincing sign
he might already be stuck
in the weeds.

His walleye was twenty-eight inches.
Every angler in sight
came to interview,
inspect, and glean advice
as Pa held court all morning
from his folding throne
at the Mouth of the Brule.
 

DEATH DO US PART

When we were young and eager
we promised to stay together until death.
We could not imagine a disease
called Lewy Body dementia would
over years destroy everything.

First forgetting facts, dates,
names, where you were going,
movies, books, conversation,
how to play the piano, then flying,
driving.

And now the devastating loss
of balance. You fall
over and over, inside,
outside, even holding the deck rail.

You say, “I feel lost.”
I answer, “Me, too.”

SHIRTS

I chose your shirts carefully
when I packed for Memory Care,
wanting you to look good.
I bought permanent press plaids,
no need to iron.

Today I go back home.
In the closet,
faded denims, winter wools,
that mosquito repellent one,
my favorite brown and white linen,
summer polos, chamois, corduroys,
shirts I sewed for Christmas.
None you will ever wear again.

I gather them all in a bear hug,
bury my face in your old
Black Watch flannel
and weep.

Photograph is from Everyday Love, 2015, Pen Pal is from Homefront (Evening Street Press, 2015,) Good Old Joe is from Everyday Love, 2015, The Pro is from All That Matters, 2018, Orchard is from Everyday Love, 2015, Death Do Us Part is from River, 2020, and Shirts is from River, 2020.