The Good Woman

There’s no catch to this poem.
Abe Lincoln’s stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston
Lincoln was a good woman. You might say
she saved the boy who became the man who
saved the Union.  When her wagon
pulled up to that squalid cabin in Illinois, she
saw what was needed. She strongly
encouraged Tom Lincoln to lay a wood
floor and hang a real door at the entrance,
not a dirty bearskin rug. And the boy:
Abe had fallen into sullen despair. As if
his mother’s death wasn’t enough, he thought his
father a dolt. Sarah became his rock. Later she
said, “Abe was the best boy I ever saw,” and
that included her son.

If you go to a certain site on the internet,
you can see an actual photo of Sarah Bush
Johnston Lincoln. She’s plain as a Quaker.
There’s a wary expression in her pale
eyes. Maybe she was thinking of all she
had seen. She had seen her stepson go off
to Washington in ’61. She had seen his funeral
cortege return.

That’s seeing.