The Long Drive

This weeks 'words and pictures' theme is 'The Long Drive'. Firstly, apologies for linking to Pip's blog and then not coming through with the goods! Not very good blog etiquette at all.. I was so excited, I had a photo in mind, taken from the passenger seat of an old valiant with the highway stretching ahead, and my lovers hands on the steering wheel; but despite booting up of old computers and searched through countless folders I couldn't find it!

So, I have a poem instead.

The Shipfitter's Wife

I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I would go to him where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles,
his calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me-the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the first man clanging
off the hull's silver ribs, spark of lead
kissing metal, the clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle
and the long drive home.

-Dorianne Laux

This poem stayed with me for days. It's beautiful. Every time I read it I feel like I'm right there, watching the wife softly caress away her husband's worries away. I was especially touched by the line that reads, "Then I'd open his clothes and take the whole day inside me." Every time I read that sentence it makes me- that idea of sharing your life and days so completely with another person, and carrying each other through. Call me a soppy romanitc, but- ok, well, yeah. I AM a soppy romantic.