8909 Petersburg Road
I've watched my parents build
their marriage around their house
(the house, I am told, my father
dreamt of as a child). The same
house now for nearly fifty years,
evolving, adding on, renovating
as one does, as life demands, but
always this one address, on less
than an acre, the old parsonage,
the farmhouse on the hill, one
of the first in McCutchanville,
a landmark, I suppose. And for all
those years, some version of Dad
up on his ladder, scraping away
flaking paint, replacing the rotten,
shoring up the compromised, filling
the holes that find their way over
time, and Mom in the garden,
wrestling the weeds, decapitating
moles, defending her kingdom;
splitting what is overgrown,
preparing the beds for new color
and new life. Now, I don't know
if they ever talked about this, if
they ever planned to give this gift
to one another. Perhaps it happens
that people do, but mostly, I think
that people drift, and it feels like
my parents landed and never lifted,
never gave themselves over to
the shifting winds. Instead they
worked their way into the marrow
of this house. They did not settle in,
but centered themselves around
the fire. Theirs is a house that knows
its way, a living place, a place that
breathes and returns itself to
its own, ongoing reverential tasks:
Such constant tending and attention.
Such beautiful, steady sacrifice.
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