Out-House Ode

Tom and collaborated on this poetry broadside (or "broadsheet," as they are sometimes called). Tom wrote the poem and I drew the drawing. We gave it to Nancy, Tom's sister, for her birthday. Nancy now owns the property where this venerable out-house still stands, just down the driveway from our house.

Here's the poem for those of you who don't have a magnifying glass to hand:

OUT-HOUSE ODE

When I pulled with my tractor the dead

oak limb poised to crush the out-house,

and it fell, kicking off a patch of shingles

and scarring the roof, I wondered at

that out-house, unused now sixty years,

thought of your satisfying plops and farts,

Russell, you who built it next to your magnificent

concrete bridge, you, dead now half a

century, who sailed your yawl to Nova Scotia,

old charts stashed in the main house still

bearing your waypoints and courses,

and your meadow, boat-house, wooden

row-boats, the long brass telescope

to watch, you said, yachts run aground

in the cove, all of this in the place you

gave abruptly to our family sixty years ago,

I thought of you, relieved in your

outhouse, planning projects with your

shackles and lines, your taps and dies,

your water-cooled grindstone, and I thought

of your wife reading her French newspaper,

brewing tea to serve on the fine china

that you also left in this house on the Maine

coast, a gift of high kindness by you, to us.

trm