Ginny Lowe Connors: "A Husband's Refuge"

           You stroll into the garage like an angel

diving into sudden grace; all the gears and gaskets

in the place shine brighter now, engines hum their low,

loving hymns to vroom and go, beauty of brawn

directed forward into flight. Whistling lightly, you caress

your tools, measure copper tubing, cut it down to size,

shoot thin flames to rearrange it, slowly shape and change it,

all according to some fine plan you have devised.

You study stacks of diagrams, handle metal by the sheet,

weld solutions thoughtfully. You are careful, useful, neat.

             Sometimes the snow demands to be shoveled;

it piles up, and bills drift into mountains that fall apart,

that swirl around your knees. When we turn up the heat,

Lord, how the pipes sigh and wheeze, but we must try

a little longer living with a furnace that’s antique. And now

your father needs to tell you something urgent, but since

the stroke, he can barely speak. What emerges when he tries

could break your heart. The strongest man in the world

has turned feeble, peevish, weak. And your son,

who’s far away, forgets to call, forgets to call, forget

            all that. Something crystal clear and perfect

is taking shape right here. The answers seek and find

you in this austere garage retreat, temple of True Value

tools, where you, my laboring lover, are lost

in pure, creative heat.

"A Husband's Refuge" by Ginny Lowe Connors. Text as published by The Atlanta Review (2001).

Art credit: "Noe Welding," photograph of welder Todd Noe, by Brandon Skinner.