The Butcher's Wife

The Butcher’s Wife



Once my braids swung heavy as ropes.
Men feared them like gallows.
Night fell
When I combed them out
No one could see me in the dark

Then I stood still
Too long and the braids took root
I wept, so helpless.
The braids tapped deep and flourished

A man came by with an ox on his shoulders.
He yoked it to my apron
And pulled me from the ground

From that time on I wound the braids around my head
So that my arms would be free to tend him.
He could lift a grown man by the belt with his teeth.

In a contest, he’s press a whole hog, side of beef.
He loved his highballs, his herring
and the attentions of women.
He died pounding his chest with no last words for anyone.

The gin vessels in his face broke and darkened.
I traced them far from that room into Bremen on the Sea.
The narrow streets twisted don to the piers,
And far off in the black, rocking water,
the lights of trawlers
Beckoned, like the heart’s uncertain signals,
Faint, and Final.



Louise Erdrich