Dresses I have never worn


Ruby Tells All

When I was told, as Delta children were,
that crops don't grow unless you sweat at night,
I thought that it was my own sweat they meant.
I have never felt as important again
as on those early mornings, waking up,
my body slick, the moon full on the fields.
That was before air conditioning.
Farm girls sleep cool now and wake up dry
but still the cotton overflows the fields.
We lose everything that's grand and foolish;
it all becomes something else. One by one,
butterfiles turn into caterpillars
and we grow up, or more or less we do,
and, Lord, we do lie then. We lie so much
truth has a false ring and it's hard to tell.

I wouldn't take crap off anybody
if I just knew that I was getting crap
in time not to take it. I could have won
a small one now and then if I was smarter,
but I've poured coffee here too many years
for men who rolled in in Peterbilts,
and I have gotten into bed with some
if they could talk and seemed to be in pain.

I never asked for anything myself;
giving is more blessed and leaves you free.
There was a man, married and fond of whiskey.
Given the limitations of men, he loved me.
Lord, we laid concern upon our bodies
but then he left. Everything has its time.
We used to dance. He made me feel the way
a human wants to feel and fears to.
He was a slow man and didn't expect.
I would get off work and find him waiting.
We'd have a drink or two and kiss awhile.
Then a bird-loud morning late one April
we woke up naked. We had made a child.
She's grown up now and gone though God knows where.
She ought to write, for I do love her dearly
who raised her carefully and dressed her well.

Everything has its time. For thirty years
I never had a thought about time.
Now, turning through newspapers, I pause
to see if anyone who passed away
was younger than I am. If one was
I feel hollow for a little while
but then it passes. Nothing matters enough
to stay bent down about. You have to see
that some things matter slightly and some don't.
Dying matters a little. So does pain.
So does being old. Men do not.
Men live by negatives, like don't give up,
don't be a coward, don't call me a liar,
don't ever tell me don't. If I could live
two hundred years and had to be a man
I'd take my grave. What's a man but a match,
a little stick to start a fire with?

My daughter knows this, if she's alive.
What could I tell her now, to bring her close,
something she doesn't know, if we met somewhere?
Maybe that I think about her father,
maybe that my fingers hurt at night,
maybe that against appearances
there is love, constancy, and kindness,
that I have dresses I have never worn.

Miller Williams

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That has to be one of my favorite all time poems. I love
it so. I can see Ruby. I know this woman. I know her
daughter. I know her man. I can see her dresses.

I want to write a poem called

Dresses I Have Worn

It would go something like this:

There's the long, black silk one
with the sublte sexy slit in the back. Three-
quarter length sleeves, fitted waistline,
zippered back, brass buttons in a U-
shape (that dips slightly away from the waist
and toward the rear for added affect)
that I wore to Papaw's funeral. Too small
now to fit the weight of the ages, I still
feel compelled to keep it there, at the back
of the closet, wrapped in plastic.

But it would say more without being so
desciptive about the dresses themselves.
I just felt something go through
my body as I touched those dresses--
something close to melancholy or wistfulness
or maybe even dysphoria.

Word retrieval problems march on!

Oh those dresses in the back of my closet
that I've kept though I can't wear them any longer,
and even if I could, I don't know that I would.

Each of them was worn at a wedding,
funeral, class reunion, or dedication
of some sort.

But there's a poem lurking somewhere
in them there dresses, there is.