This is called "Wheelwright & Smith."
Yeah, what to say about it?
I don't know.
Three of my four grandparents died this last year.
And during that time, I came to know my great aunt
better and some of the family history a little bit better.
And on that side of the family, my mom's family,
we have preachers.
And on my dad's side of the family
we've got truck drivers and Harley riders
and highwaymen and those--
virtue and vice, like in a lot of Southern families.
So this is a poem in that context.
"Wheelwright & Smith."
A wheelwright in the glen trains his young son
on the forge and the while cures his deer meat at the spring.
The water cold and swift makes it last.
Trains his son that is to shape and cool to hitch.
A hitch is anything one carries from spring to hilltop,
like a son or a hard bulb universal.
There are both meanings.
A freight on wheels drags against the trail
but for the wheels.
The trail can lead overpasses and dales
full of dwellings providence has had to ditch,
up the old pig path a bad deal in the weeds.
The wheelwright raises a smith after his ampersand,
but the trade card the sun enterprises
to distribute among travelers he never
prints until the wheel of the old man's passing parks
and the horses unyoked, then empties a sigh into winter.
It took this lifetime to learn the trench suggesting settlers
stay a while was his doing too, drawing on far more
than the team could manage.
Attached to his other idea up and go
had ever been as popular as abide.
And at that rate, to set out was likewise heritage here.
Fanning across the Blue Ridge and Piedmont
dismay and its parent Calvinism intermarried more primitive
Baptists and highwaymen until Huguenot and her broad face
and hymnal rumbling, he, like his brothers
atop the overhead valve, pushrod engine.
Age 28 by 1980.
The census records his profession as tractor trailer
dispatch manager, one hitch seven.