Why do you shake?

I’m from the shaking Quakers

If not by The Blood

yet formative all the same

pneumonia took Momma

when only forty four

her body rests everlasting

on the Old Kitty Bradshaw place

well-known in Mercer County

Martha, thirteen days from turning five

and little Susie, only two

seventh & eighth of Fannie’s babies, after all

What can the men of the house do

Please raise these young’uns,

entrusting them to your care

as I tend to your Pleasant gardens

asking not to be forced into your ways

I ask that they be loved

their primary formation spent in Centre utopia

lessons deeply, profoundly echoing through generations.

Resonating over 130 years,

So dance on you dervish

whirling to the glory of all

before, after, below and above

proof for what we carry in our DNA.

Sisters Martha Jane Bradshaw and Susie “Mattie” Bradshaw, estimated soon after the 1886 death of their mother, Frances Jane Murphy Bradshaw (framed in copper with all elements fused together such that the image cannot be separated from the packaging that is potentially more than 130 years old)