Untitled (couple)

we lived in a mud hut for awhile you and i

I’d carve things out of branches

While you’d dream of grand balustrades

And federalist-style windows

Foraging for food down by the river

You’d talk of new linens

On the table we didn’t have

And how this or that would

Look good in the alcove of the

Drawing room

I’d piece together

Scraps of leather

For covering us in the winter

While your head was filled

With pictures of fur lined boots

And elegant stoles

 

We couldn’t prepare

Ourselves anymore for what would

Be a short life together

Me taken early by overwork

And lack of rest

And you by dreams

Unfulfilled

 

I couldn’t hate you anymore

Than what I did

There was no time

What with the spring rains

Headed this way

We finally got around

To saving seeds from year to year

And plowing up the good soil

And learning about rotating the crops

You were barren

But no fault of your own

We needed field hands to help

With all the chores but you didn’t

Want the inconvenience or disruption

Of a well-tended figure. We called it a draw

And went to work on what we could salvage:

You of your memories of civilization; I of

Bending the basics to my will.

 

All I wanted (I maintained until the end)

Was what truth had to offer. I was tired of

Living in somebody else’s picture of a life. I picked

This woman before I knew what I wanted. She stayed

To see (I’m convinced) me being sucked and ravaged

By what is really harsh for a man who was not built

For hardness. For someone who learned things, but only the

Simplest surface of them.

(c) jim hill (01-21-10)