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.