We Sang Dark Songs in Grade School
All through John
Brown’s illness
there was nothing
in the color of his face
but bone, even his tall
sons were scrimshawed
crow’s feet.
He rested all winter
in a narrow rope bed
below the stairs, pushed
against the roughhewn
timbers. He must have
cursed the chill
from the river, the lack
of sun in the window.
Under the stairs
that led to the loft, he
listened to the wind,
the ice and snow
creeping into the walls ‒
the adze edges still
visible today, blades
hacked too deep. Even
years later, long past
his a-mouldering, no
softening smooths
the cuts, scars deep
in the white-
washed logs, nothing now
but the song book
and children’s voices.