stack neatly three cords of stove wood
for kitchen heating (ache, diddly ache)
with no idea how much they’ll need for winter

learn to use a variable-speed screwdriver,
far from expertly, while hanging drywall and doors
(ache, diddly ache)

the plumbers finally show for a day
installing a new boiler just before
the season’s first hard cold snap
and now, having switched, the price
of natural gas price shoots up

still, his Lady of Yard Sale Bargains cites
environmental advantages before
terrifying Halloween trick-or-treaters

and Big Brush Fire No. 2 reduces
three more huge piles to ash and
His Lady of Princess Pink costumes herself as a hippie
to his glowing relief, after the Britney Spears
she’d been threatening

but first, there’s the push to paint the new rooms
in the barn and then lay vinyl in its bathroom
(ache, diddly ache)

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Home Maintenance poems, click here.

there is much to admire in the unembellished line
when true

Squirrel, who would drive a crooked furrow
in a place where only the best horses
may be proud without sinning

has strayed much as a black bear past midnight
after the spring lambing

* * *

maybe he could have built a dairy herd
milked in a white-walled shed

given the right partner, who would not weep
over bank statements where the only green
would be choked with weeds

his life fenced in, a private Eden
stacked with moldy bales

to slip into rubber boots and shovel
his way back, behind him

* * *

but the scoutmaster was right
Squirrel’s not handy, that way

with wrenches or wiring
or even bent nails, much less

some ballgame or ice skates
no wonder the world was wide open

to the embroidery of his mind
when he had nothing to hold on to

these things shape one’s direction
as much as any opportunity

* * *

today’s American farmer
is a mechanic, electrician, carpenter,
accountant, designer before
the crops and herds matter

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Home Maintenance poems, click here.