Rules for Building a Woodpile
This poem appears in The Love of a Good Man.
The most important thing when you build a woodpile
is to place it a foot or two off the ground.
You must stack the pieces close, leave no space
for a mouse, cover the top to keep dry;
let fresh wind pass through the rest.
You must try to keep your mind on the task
of stacking the wood, not imagine yourself
in some past secret life, in a forest somewhere,
walking back to seló through the trees, vyshyvanka
betraying your shoulders, skirts flounced by the breeze.
Woven basket holds things grown from the land: green onions
as shapely as trees, red tomatoes' full bosoms in hands.
As I walk past the first house, I hold the eye of each
lanky boy. They dare neither dream nor breathe as I pass.
Which one shall I choose for the time when the night falls mute,
good townsfolk asleep? I grant manual gifts, ere the fog lifts.
I was six, when the man wearing sable came and sat
at my father's table to announce that we were now free
of the plough. Oh, I'd read the proclamation, just to be sure,
but I wouldn't know how. There's no tales I could write you
on birch, but all of my village would come and perch
just to hear me sing, filling my lungs with skaz. They would watch
my impeccable brows, and remember while shingling their roofs
how they'd spied my impossible braid by the small of my back,
as the river had cleansed me of proof of my days full of work.
At the harvest festival's moon, I might just swoon,
secret away the comeliest, most ample of girls,
'til her cheeks are nothing but blush and pearl. Then, flesh flushed
I'd take pride in my victory, take her pulse with my lips,
leave the hay bales, return—as if never left—to the khorovod dance
where I'd spin round, and round, and round yet, 'til collapsed,
heaving chest slips on breath, when—
SLAM from the neighbours'
family van reminds me: You must stake spikes,
tie guy ropes to keep your woodpile upright. Pick logs
from the bottom. Keep your fire fed, cheerful, bright.