(after Sherry Chandler)
1.
To get to be her husband
was luck
I’d gone down her dead
end road
looking to walk the buffalo
trace to Blue Licks Springs,
she showed me where to start
and came along on a whim,
a clear cool day
after Thanksgiving
but I swear lightning
was in the air
Brief doubts
life issues
her children, my children
my job, her business
melted like bees’ wax
into a candle
that we burned at both ends
Soapmaking on the scale
of 1,500 bars per batch
left me amazed
at her strength
of mind and body
Olive oil, coconut oi[, & tallow
she rendered from beef fat
in a cast iron pot with a wood fire,
mixed together and poured
into a 50 gallon honey tank
My early morning task:
stirring it all together
with a canoe paddle
for three hours.
2.
It must have been love
3.
Soapmaker
Queen of essential oils
Professor of alchemy
to turn lye, water & oil
into a oval bar shaped
to be held in your hand
Artist of the label design
and the exact act
of wrapping each one
in good time
CEO of sales, shipping & craft shows
4.
Look at the property of each kind:
Lavender
Lemongrass
Citrus
Rose Geranium
Rosemary
Unscented
5.
Sometimes I open the letters
she gets from customers
who are pleased to have a soap
to which they are not alergic.
They often become life long friends
6.
Tonight
after 33 years of soapmaking
I sit with her
in this old fashioned house
just 50 yards from the soap shop
where the bars from Thursday’s batch
are laid out on racks
to dry for three weeks
before being wrapped by a neighbor’s
teenaged daughters
for some extra spending money.
7.
Some people call a bar of soap
a Cake of soap.
We”ve had our cake
and washed with it too
8.
Sometimes I imagine
our life together as two doves
flying about
and coming back to the same place
