Dean and I spent most of the day yesterday staining the new front door. My back aches and my head still feels fuzzy from the fumes. (I wonder if this is what sniffing glue feels like?). But the door is turning out to be really lovely. Now we just have to put on three coats of varnish, sanding between each coat, and we'll be done (and can get started on the same for the back door). Ahh, the joys of homo-nership.


*
Sweat Equity

Layers of green shag smothered oak hardwoods,
rolls of 1950’s newspapers insulated
a basement stairway closet, aluminum-framed
windows with broken seals grew a greenish algae.

But how else could we look back now upon
romantic weekends scraping layers of paint,
lovers quarrelling over colors for siding, then
hanging new double-hungs.

Re-roofing, re-plumbing , re-wiring,
removing a false lowered ceiling:
not so much a revision
as a retelling,

adding to what had gone before,
working up the sweet sweat
that makes a relationship hum,
makes a place indelibly, undeniably yours.

It’s how we come to inhabit where we are:
tearing down a wall, planting a tree,
brushing another coat of paint onto plaster,
lowering a hedge to reclaim a view.

Like when we wrote our names
onto the closet wall of the first apartment
we shared, before re-paneling it with cedar —
we’re still there, beneath the surface, built in.


-- from What's Written on the Body