She Buys Me Tools

On the occasion of our anniversary, a tribute to my beloved wife Neal Ann

She Buys Me Tools

I catch myself boasting inside

About my prowess

When the edges match

And the room is trimmed

By the bottom edges

If I keep enjoying this sure-footed feeling

I may grow careless and break the rhythm

I neither want to waste the baseboard trim

Nor the loving deal between her and him

She talks about me to all her friends

With the feminine logic of a farmer's daughter

"I think you should buy a husband

all the tools he needs"

And they dare not doubt her rhetorical power

She learned it in a moment

Of wondering how-"Husband!

I didn't know you knew how to work like this!"

"I never had the tools," I told her then

We were too poor for that little table saw

But she didn't stop there, no way

Drills and cutters, benders and blades

Pads for knees and mortar trowels

Plus how-to books, cords and ladders

Money was a tool she learned to use

To help me build a precision life

As I was learning to really measure

My brain was building scaffolds and ladders

As the pattern spreads now into the world

Her generosity grows to this dimension:

She's buying houses that I may practice

So that she can retire with all she needs

To buy me tools and tame my mental weeds