Birdie wanted it to look modern. I’d take em off,
But asbestos lung ain’t a thing I’d care to die of.
I love watching Birdie’s flowers bloom,
Tulips and yellowbells, japonica and lilacs,
Clematis and iris, snowballs and peony roses.
I keep ’em up because of her, and, besides,
I’d almost as soon raise tulips as taters.
You can’t eat flowers, but they sure dress up a table.
The masterest thing about this fine old place?
From the front porch you spy Mount Pisgah,
And don’t see a neighbor in any direction.
Knock on wood, Lord willing, it’ll stay that way.
Olan Mills
There’s a faded picture in the front room
Of me and Birdie back when I went to church
All posed up for that squirrely traveling man
A-trying to catch her pretty and me peart.
She always took a good picture,
But he had a job of work to do on me.
Mr. and Mrs. Olan Mills, at your service.
Birdie
Ten years ago my sweet bride, Birdie,
Set up in the bed, said Lord have mercy …
Wake up, Posey … it’s my head …
Fell back, dead before she hit the pillow.
Gone before I waked enough to know
We’d never walk hand in hand again.
She won’t no bigger’n one of them squinch owls.
Her folks, teachers, everbody called her Birdie.
Shoot, I didn’t know her Christian name was Edith
Till we got a wedding license. We spent fifty fine years
In this old house together, sheltered by yonder ridge,
Heated by trusty cords of love and yellow locust.
Still miss her. Like a man with a sawed-off limb.
When I hear a yellowhammer or one of them wag-tail birds
Looking at me sideways. I’ll say Hey, Birdie, I’m doing good
For an old buzzard. But one of these first days
We’ll go walking again. She’ll flit off like that made her happy.
Might be nothing, but it’s a drab of hope for an old man.
Burying Ground
It’s mighty quiet on the side of the hill.
A pretty place, too, to lay down facing east
Against that trumpet blast they talk about
In the Revelations. I get up here ever now and again,
To tidy up, tend to plants, say howdy to Birdie.
Sometimes, like today, I just set a spell and think.
People don’t hardly have family burying grounds anymore.
It’s a shame, for there you see where you come from —
As well as where you’re bound. Dust to dust, the Book says.
Birdie’s people started planting here when her great-grandpa died.
That’s him yonder with the gates of heaven opening up
Atop his marble column. What I hear, he likely busted other gates
Wide open, but that’s not mine to judge. There’s all kind of tomb rocks,
From store-bought stones with “Gone but not Forgotten,”
To square rectangles with hand-chiseled names and dates
But no room (or maybe patience) for words of remembrance,
To moss- and lichen-covered fieldstones
Under which lie stillbirths and babies lived a day or two.
Birdie and me had one of them, she called her Sarah,
But the young’un never even cried.
She’s buried way over yonder where it’s as quiet as she was
So she can listen to the birds in peace,
And she’s got the best view of Pisgah a gal could want.
I planted that butterfly bush next to Birdie ’cause she loved ’em,
And I put in that lilac close to Sarah. Birdie, bless her,
Planted March flowers on our girl’s grave
So early spring I come up here for yellow comfort.
I thin and replant ever few years — Birdie’s circled by
The children of Sarah’s first flowers. She’d like that.
One of these days they’ll lay me down beside her
Forever to sleep. By then, I’m sure, I’ll need the rest.
Long Tom
Back when Papa built this house
He bought a Sears and Roebuck Long Tom
Twelve-gauge goose gun.
Forty-one-inch barrel, all the recoil pad
A solid walnut stock affords.
It still hangs by the front door,
Loaded with number two. It ain’t never
Killed nothing ’cept squirrels
And
