Charles Swanson's "Word of John Ward" carries the poem of voices that Frost developed in New Hampshire to the farms of Appalachia. Beyond the difference in locale, there are many similarities between Frost's "Two Tramps At Mudtime" and Swanson's narrative.  Both poems pose a question that is never answered by the narrative. Therein lies the dramatic effect that each poem achieves.  

 WORD OF JOHN WARD

You got up to Dr. Tom’s today.  I can see
The bag of pills.  And the peppermint sticks
Say you stopped at Grady, too. Candy
And coconut and coffee, how many miles
You wouldn’t walk!  But you did bring me
Some flour home so I can keep making bread.

He smiled as she fretted, patted her back,
Linked and unlinked a gallus, reached down
To stroke the hound dog on its head.  Fatback
Sizzled, coffee steamed, her hands treaded
The mound of flour.  I’m glad you’re gone and back.
As she worked the hog lard through and through.

 

He stretched and yawned, standing over her.
It is a sight of a walk.  I don’t go enough
With kinfolk up there.  I could have took old Myrt,
But she don’t walk no faster than me.  And she needs
Her strength to pull tobacco sleds.  She looks pert
For now, but she’s old, while I’ve got young legs,

 

But right tired legs, tonight.  And he worked
His toes in his sock feet.  They pulled up chairs
To the oilcloth, broke bread, sopped up yolk
With deft movements of the wrists, breakfast
At night.  They depended on their eggs and pork.
They depended on this space for supper talks.

 

I hope your daddy don’t hear what I heard today.
Some think John Ward’s back.  But Alec gets around
More than me.  Even though he lives away
Back up the mountain, he comes to the stores.
That new man down by Worlds, I heard Bill say,
Is nothing more than John Ward in a shaggy beard.

 

Course, there’s some debate on that, with him
Been gone for thirty, forty years.  I wouldn’t know
Him from a tadpole.  He killed your grandpa when
You and I weren’t even born.  There’s got
To be some changes in his looks.  In Jim’s
Voice there was a note of lightness, for his wife

 

Was one to worry.  What he didn’t say,
What he knew, was that she would speak on this
Again, again.  He had added a great weight
To her that she would not unload.  She would stand
Before it like a darkened sky, too scared to wait,
Not certain it would strike, but afraid to run.

 

When he had married her, he didn’t know
  That this would be his role, to listen, nod,
To care.  He learned that she would come to grow
Her fears like weeds.  He would do his best
To pull them out, for each one choked a kindness.
So they loved, so they grew their hillside farm.

  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa