FAREWELL TO AN OLD STEW PAN

   When the government asked for the women of the nation to contribute all of their aluminum kitchen utinsels that they could spare to the war effort, for the making of airplanes I grew sentimental as I parted with an OLD STEW PAN:

OLD STEW PAN we must part today
   It sorta makes me sad,
I know a PAN more useful
   No woman ever had.

I cannot tell how many hundred
   Times I've needed YOU
For boiling puddings, beans or corn
   Or appetizing STEW;
I've often dreamed as I have worked
   And visioned some glad day
When in an airplane I'd go
   To distant lands away;

But never in my wildest dreams
   OLD STEW PAN did I see,
That in those flights to distant lands
   YOU'D go instead of me;

But now OLD PAN, that day has come
   Our country's in a stew,
It is calling for aluminum
   And I am sending YOU.

Instead of holding wholesome food
   The hungry ones to fill,
Your task will be conveying bombs;
   To wreck and maime and kill;

And oh! the devastation
   And suffering you'll see,
Before this war is over
   And nations will be free;

So fare thee well, old STEW-PAN;
   Until this war is through,
If one of us must  be there,
   I'D RATHER IT BE YOU. 

Poems by Fanny Gudmundsen Brunt poems
Moods and Memories published 1945