Each word he spoke then seemed to weaken him,
and when he drove away I sat there crying
though I couldn’t tell my mother what it meant.
I was only seventeen when I met Jim.
He lumberjacked in the camp out to the lake.
I always liked the woods, so green and nice,
the ferns in bunches, trees covered in moss.
When I was little I was scared to walk
alone for fear the Indians would get me,
but Jim made the woods seem lighter than before.
His family was Welsh. They all was singers.
Next to Doctor Hale you’d think he was small,
more my size, but he was a strong camp boss.
Men always said he was good to work for.
Once he let his whiskers grow like the men
and I said they was awful-looking things.
“What’s the matter, Sally,” says he. “Seen a ghost?”
“Jim,” I says, “you’ve ruined your face.”
“Ruined?”
I told him I wouldn’t stand for any man
who looked like a porcupine. That day he shaved.
He had wavy black hair and shiny eyes,
could eat like a mule and still dance all night.
He used to say there was music in the Welsh
and fight in the Norse—that’s the stock I come from.
Jim was always a truthful husband, and I
told him only the one white lie. I said
my father used to call me Sally Peaches.
I suppose I wanted Jim to call me that,
but it never felt right when he said the name.
Then one year that northeasterly come down.
We’d been on the farm a while. Jim bought the place
so I wouldn’t have to cook in a camp.
There was peach trees on it just for me, he said.
The cold he caught in that storm turned bad,
sank down in his lungs and worked there rasping him
with pain. I sent a neighbor for Doctor Hale
and all day set with a fear he wouldn’t come.
Finally I heard his buggy—he never
his whole life would drive a car—stop outside,
and saw him stoop to come in at the door.
He went to work while I stayed in the kitchen
brewing tea. Outside the leaves was blackened,
rattling in the wind like sick men breathing.
Made me dizzy just to think of it.
When Doctor Hale come out he was pasty and old.
He took his glasses off, rubbed a sore spot
on the bridge of his nose, give me a flat look.
He said, “Jim’s been asking for Sally Peaches.”
There we were in the kitchen, six feet apart
and silent as the frost on the windowpanes.
The black leaves was death, though. I knew for sure
they would take someone. That year Mama died.
That year, while the trees was still all blighted,
Doctor Hale was killed. His horse took a fright
off a bridge and threw him into the river.
There’s foxes on the road. People suppose
it was the foxes give that horse such a scare.
You never saw so big a funeral
as his. The church spilled people into the street.
The paper said a whole era was gone.
He was the last of the horse and buggy doctors.
You won’t believe me, but I saw him again.
I tell you I saw him here in this very room
twenty-two years ago, the year Jim died.
It wasn’t too long after Kennedy
that Jim took sick again and I could see
the blood draining out of his face, his lips
a pale purple, skin damp and hands ice cold.
I did the only thing I knew to do
and prayed to God not to take him away.
It was dark. The house rattled in a wind.
I sat there in the kitchen by the stove
muttering this prayer, and the room changed.
I wasn’t alone any more.
I turned and saw a man beside the door,
knew him by the wire rims of his glasses,
his smile peaceful though he was made of rain.
I heard his voice with so much gentleness:
“Sally, hush, all our illnesses will end.”
When he said my name it was like the sound
grew inside me till the tears just had to fall.
I could almost feel his big hand on my hair.
By the time I dried my eyes he was gone.
For eight long months Jim wasted away.
I remember cursing God for what he did
and I know in his heart how Jim cursed God.
Sometimes I wanted Doctor Hale to come,
but the dead can’t be faithful anymore.
I got up in the middle of every night
to give Jim his pills. Already it was like
I lived alone in a house with many voices.
One of those nights I saw he’d gone at last.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know
why I thought there was one more thing to do,
a last thing, because Jim was Welsh and I knew
there was something you had to do for the Welsh.
I thought about how fine he used to look.
How his eyes was bright. How he sang at camp.
I looked out the window and could feel him
lying there in the cold bed at my back.
I knew what he was telling me, and left
the window open for his soul to go.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
David Mason is the former Poet Laureate of Colorado. His previous books of poems include Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, The Country I Remember, and Arrivals. His verse novel, Ludlow, won the Colorado Book Award and was featured on the PBS News-Hour. Mason is the author of three essay collections, including Voices, Places and a memoir, News from the Village. He wrote the libretti for Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter and for Tom Cipullo’s award-winning After Life. Mason divides his time between Colorado and Tasmania, and teaches at Colorado College.