This poem by Mike Wilson appeared in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel
Papaw and Mamaw Say I Do
She was sixteen, picking beans
when he rode in on a black stallion
literally swept her off her feet
claiming
her against her family’s wishes but
in accordance with her own
they galloped
to Tennessee.
He was a dirt farmer who made everything
with his hands: a house, furniture in it,
a barn to house tobacco
She grew a garden
apples, cherries, grapes to feed six kids
in a holler too poor to afford a high school
cleaned and washed and cooked and canned
every moment filled with work except for
church
He was close-mouthed, couldn’t risk
wasting words, but made her fix a full dinner
for every visitor who dropped in, even when
they lacked food enough to feed themselves
She sewed
so much it would have made a mortal blind
but store-bought was for people with money
except
after selling the crop, if he let her, she’d buy
a pretty to treasure.
He was Republican in a county of Democrats, too
young for World War I, too old for World War II,
tenor in a gospel quartet, drank whiskey when he
could get it, harbored judgments he kept to himself.
His voice could strike like a hickory stick on her
and the children, but never the grandchildren.
Theirs was marriage when husbands and wives
didn’t talk like characters in a novel or
need to dress up love in words
still
she imagined what he could have said
she wished she could have heard.
Your poem about Mamaw and Papaw really resonated with me. My eastern Ky roots.
Joni! where in Eastern KY?