>> This is the last poem of mine I will read.
I'm also really happy that Poetry Center is doing what it's doing and through reaching
out of the University to the community, reaching past the community to community
across the border, bringing people together across languages and minds.
That's what poetry can and should do.
The ark upon his shoulders.
My husband did all this.
We used to live in a rambling kind of house with gossipy verandas.
Then he bought a stove, an iron stove with a reservoir to it.
He always insisted it was bad luck to come in that door and go out the other.
It's bad luck to pay back salt if you borrow it.To the day he died he smelled pulled
up from the dirt.
He worked the Norfolk Southern forty years, walking on top of freight trains.
I've seen him up there and the wind just blowing.
You could see the wind blowing his clothes.Our second house, he built it.
Cut me a yard broom from dogwood bushes, tied in three places.
Hogs squealed under the floorboards in winter, you could see one through the cracks.
He had something he said to hush them.
Come up the porch steps arms full of lightwood.
In those days, we drank good old cool water out of the well, cool, and put some syrup in it
and stir it up and drink it right along with our dinner.
The summers were so hot, you saw little devils twizzling out in front of you.
He called them lazy jacks.
It was the heat.
Listen at that bird, he'd say.
It's telling us love one another.
He caught a ride back from town with seeds and a hoop of greasy cheese
and crackers and sardines and light bread.
He carried that umbrella over me and I would have his hat walking to church.
We lost the first one.The midwife came late, she used dirt-dauber tea for my pains.
He tried telling me it wasn't any death owl, it was a ordinary hoot owl outside the house.
But I tied a knot in my sheet so it wouldn't quiver.
I was in such trouble, he petted me a lot.
Three days labor he attended me how a dragonfly hovers over water in the clear sun.
The next year we had a beautiful girl baby, Ruthie.
Ruthie, after my mother.
Towards the end, he was a bit thick-listed.
I never yelled though, he read my lips.
When the katydid chirps, I miss him saying there'll be forty days until frost.
Ones who were in trouble they always sought him out.
Listen at that bird, he'd say.
The things he knew how to do, he did them.
>> El arca sobre sus hombros.
Mi esposo hizo todo esto.
Antes vivíamos en una casa medio tembeleque de balcones chismosos.
Luego, él compró una estufa, una de hierro con su depósito.
Siempre insistía en que daba mala suerte entrar por esta puerta y salir por la otra.
Es de mala suerte pagar con sal a quien has pedido sal.
Hasta el día de su muerte, olía a haber tragado polvo.
Trabajó en la Norfolk Southern cuarenta años, caminando sobre trenes de carga.
Lo ví allá arriba, el viento soplaba hasta que se veía cómo le alzaba la ropa.
Nuestra segunda casa también la construyó.
Me hizo una escoba jardinera de ramitas de conejo, amarrada en tres partes.
Los marranos chillaban bajo los tablones del suelo en invierno,
uno se veía entre las cuarteaduras.
Él decía tener algo que los calmaba,
subir por los escalones del porche con los brazos llenos de leña.
En aquellos días bebíamos agua de pozo, bien fresca,
fresca y le poníamos jarabe y la agitábamos y la bebíamos hasta el fondo con la cena.
Los veranos eran tan calurosos que se veían diablillos retorciéndose delante de uno.
Los llamaba flojonazos, eran por el calor.
Escucha a ese pájaro, decía, nos está diciendo amaos los unos a los otros.
Le dieron un aventón de regreso del pueblo con semillas y un tonel de queso grasiento y
galletas y sardinas y pan ligero.
Me ponía aquel paraguas encima y me dejaba su sombrero camino a la iglesia.
Perdimos el primero.
La partera llegó tarde, me dio té de boldo para los dolores.
Él trató de convencerme de que no era un tecolote de mal agüero,
sino uno cualquiera, el que estaba afuera de la casa.
Yo, de todos modos, hice un nudo en la sábana para que no temblara.
Me puse tan mal que él me apapachó bastante.
Tres días de trabajo de parto, me atendió como una libélula que revolotea sobre el agua bajo
la claridad del sol.
Al año siguiente tuvimos una hermosa niñita, Ruthie.
Ruthie como mi madre.
Al mero final, se puso un poco pesado.
No hacía falta que gritara.
Él me leía los labios.
Cuando canta la cigarra, lo extraño pues decía falta cuarenta días para la helada.
Todos los que tenían problemas siempre lo iban a buscar.
Escucha ese pájaro, decía.
Las cosas que sabía hacer, las hacía.
Dirt-dauber, I've got to talk to you about that.
You all know what dirt-daubers are here, right?
Yeah, mud-dauber, dirt-dauber.
They're like little wasps that build those mud flutes under your porch and they put eggs inside
and in the South, they make a tea out of that for, to relieve the pain of childbirth.
It's a country thing. [INAUDIBLE] I like that.
Ok.