Jenne’ Andrews: A Husband Song

.

In his warm white t-shirt

he smells of clean sheets lifting

over prairie bluebonnet fields

in flagging autumn bloom.

.

Consoling me, he smells,

of sun—

how the sun takes a man

and turns him on its spit

of iron will, browning

his long and sinewy arms,

basting him thin.

.

He smells today and again

of forgiveness–

of the one confessing here

.

to reckless and selfish words,

words that penetrate

like pinpoint knives—

.

he smells of all the times

he’s brought her balm

for her remorse

.

as lengthening day turns yet again

toward grey foothills,

that congress of slouching giants

with their whetting stones

of reprimand.

.

ii

 

Amid the years, down the furrow;

beneath the great wheel of light

toasting planet earth

in autumnal fire,

.

and all the wind-rent November

flowers, grand dame roses

hanging their magenta heads,

joining gnarled limbs

so shamelessly,

dying back as one

into pungent loam,

.

he stands among the gilded trees

that in some unknown

intellection have risen over our creek

since the day we broke this ground,

.

he poplar-like, bending with the wind,

camouflaged by the corrugated trees’ tangle,

sewn into their burlap scrim.

.

iii

.

Twenty-five years ago

our hair still dark, both our backs

inflamed from the labor

of post and rail

we learned what it is to lay a home

upon a piece of ground

.

from which we both

have come and gone

until one night–

when there were silk peach clouds

low over the hills,

the horses snuffling their grain

in the barn’s long embracing dark,

.

we admitted to each other

what this was—

wedding each other

with touch and tears:

.

my sun-weathered love,

who now at news of frost

battens down the house,

tapping the skirting in,

yellow cats with spiked tails

ever at his heels

,

and me, onlooker lover,

she who presides

over kitchen fires,

coaxing forth

the body’s bluest flame,

a salt-laced hour for rapture:

.

we time-wed

Catamaran souls,

returning to home’s

hearth and harbor

to winter in again.

—

Copyright 2015 Jenne’ Andrews