The Ark Upon His Shoulders

My husband did all this.          We used to live
in a rambling kind of house   with gossipy verandas.
Then he bought a stove, an iron stove    with a reservoir to it.
He always insisted it was bad luck    to come in that door
and go out the other. It's bad luck   to pay back salt
if you borrow it.      To the day he died
he smelled     pulled up from the dirt. He worked
the Norfolk Southern forty years       walking on top
of freight trains. I've seen him     up there
and the wind just blowing--    you could see the wind
blowing his clothes.
               Our second house                    he built it.
Cut me a yard broom     from dogwood bushes,
tied in three places. Hogs   squealed under the floorboards
in winter--you could see one    through the cracks.
He had something he said   to hush them.
Come up the porch steps      arms full of lightwood.
In those days      we drank good old cool water
out of the well--cool and   put some syrup in it
and stir it up     and drink it right along
with our dinner. The summers were    so hot you saw
little devils    twizzling out in front of you.
He called them    lazy jacks. It was the heat.
Listen at that bird,    he'd say. It's telling us,
Love one another. He caught    a ride back
from town with seeds and a hoop    of greasy cheese and crackers and
sardines and light    bread. He carried that umbrella
over me and I        would have his hat walking to church.
We lost the first one.      The midwife came late, she used dirt-
dauber tea for my pains.        He tried telling me
it wasn't any death owl, it was   a ordinary hoot owl outside
the house. But I tied a knot   in my sheet
so it wouldn't quiver.      I was in such trouble,
he petted me a lot. Three days    labor he attended me
how a dragonfly hovers    over water in the clear sun.
The next year we had a beautiful    girl baby, Ruthie.
Ruthie, after my mother.   Towards the end,
he was a bit thick-listed.      I never yelled though, he read my lips.
When the katydid    chirps, I miss him
saying there'll be forty days until frost.     Ones who were in trouble
they always     sought him out. Listen
at that bird, he'd say.
The things he knew   how to do he did them.