Cheryl Denise

Cheryl Denise has roots in Elmira, Ontario. She now lives in WV, with her husband, Mike Miller, in a timber frame home they built themselves when they were young and brimming with energy. She is the author of the poetry books, Fences, What’s in the Blood and I Saw God Dancing, all published by Cascadia Publishing House LLC. She is a Sheila-Na-Gig co-author of the book, Porch Poems, along with Kirk Judd, Sherrell Runnion Wigal & Susanna Connelly Holstein. Visit her on Facebook at Cheryl Denise, Poet. $14.00 ($4.00 US Shipping per order)

The Raising

for Mike

One Sunday afternoon sprawled on the couch
you drift off with the book
How to Build a Timber Frame Home
slipping from your fingers.
Inside diagrams of scarf joints and half laps,
determined shoulders and chiseled biceps
work an auger, a joiner orchestrates
long-haired men to assemble
timbered roof trusses.
You wake knowing you can do this.

Lunch hours home from work,
you straddle the Schnitzelbank
and carve two hundred and twelve
one-inch wooden pegs,
that will pin the intricate joinery together.

Evenings fill with load calculations
and deflection charts,
the coffee-stained book dogeared
and scrawled with notes.

Saturdays I carry a thermos of hot chocolate
to the shed, listen to the crisp sound of the slick
slicing oak shavings, as snow dusts growing stacks
of knee braces, collar ties, and queen posts.

You rig the tractor
and a set of old lawn mower tires
so you can haul the massive oak beams
by yourself.

Early one spring morning we scrape
a sheen of ice off the plywood deck.
Friends come from Pennsylvania,
Virginia, Maryland, Ontario

and down the road,
with jugs of water, a shoo fly pie,
and bags of red apples.

This is the day you’ve been waiting for.
All these eager faces,
you not wanting to disappoint.

We piece the first bent together
then heave ho as you instruct
and it rises gracefully.

For the longest bent
with three posts and two cross members
seventeen of us squat with our hands ready.
On three we lift it upright, steady, perfect.
Amongst roars of gladness
Dad and Dennis
tap the bottom of the posts
with giant wooden mallets
until they drop with a thud
into their pockets on the floor.

Bob cleans out a mortise joint
with his chisel.
Noel hangs on rafters fifteen feet in the air,
guiding purlins lifted by the crane.

God in the sun, the still air, our rough hands.

At dusk we finish, joyous and weary,
          the oak frame glowing.
Honoring tradition you nail an evergreen
branch to the peak, paying homage to the forest,
         for our home.