Mom and Dad's Retirement Home — David C.C. Bourgeois

Mom and Dad’s Retirement Home, which I had little to do with

Sonofabitch but siding a house is some work –

took fifteen minutes for my neck and face to flush –

had to keep on stretching my arms above my shoulders,

my hand so sore, the tendons begging me to rest.

So to keep from dwelling on it while I hammered,

I asked my brother what, to him, felt most like building.

He chewed this over till I saw an answer building.

“Once the frame and beams go up, and you get to work

on the roof,” he said, while his sturdy forearm hammered

nail after nail, driving each one in one shot flush,

and always swinging like he’d never need to rest.

“When you drop that 5/8ths ply on the rafters’ shoulders.”

Much of a man’s centre and strength lie in his shoulders,

and (sometimes) his sense of purpose too. I kept building

mine all morning, throwing boards up, eschewing rest,

but bearing down, gaining strength, and speeding the work

whenever relieved by an intermittent flush

of wind. I didn’t even stop for lunch – just hammered

back a sandwich and relished every time I hammered

easily, when the nails consented with my shoulders.

No relish for my brother, though – whose thoughts were flush

with planning all the time – nor any carefree building.

It fell to him to see the end, to plot our work,

sometimes to set a single board so I could mount the rest.

I wonder: does my writing sometimes seem to him like rest?

Does he suspect the toil it takes to get these verses hammered

into place? We’re so unalike, each subject to his work,

I have to wonder … And yet, admittedly, on his shoulders

the same responsibility weighs as on mine, for building

a design for living in: his replete with nails, mine flush

with words.

By afternoon I need a break – if just to flush

the swelling from my hand – but rafters never need to rest,

nor does (apparently) my brother, ever. So our building

carries on, our nail pouches slowly empty, and we’re hammered

all day long by the unrelenting sun on our bare shoulders.

We side the house in silence and the silence seems to work.

At dusk, when finally the building ends, my brother shoulders

a case of beer: a few will flush away the day’s fatigue; the rest

will get us hammered enough to talk of something other than the work.

This poem first appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, issue 90, Fall 2019.

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