Reconstruction

I am a house he would move into,
so framed for this man. With hammer
and nails he holds me together,
such tools he carries, his pliers, his adze,
gives me his awl, his drill and bits.
He puts a roof over my head.
I am shingled and waterproofed,
plumbed, mitered, and wired. He makes
of me a dream house, a cream puff,
my rough-hewn timber smoothed.
Broom-clean, in move-in condition.
I am two-storied now. He builds a fire in me.

* Diane Lockward's first book, Eve's Red Dress, was published by Wind Publications in 2003. Wind also recently published her second book, What Feeds Us. She's had poems recently published in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Poetry Review, and The Seattle Review. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. Her work also appears in the Poetry Daily anthology and in Keillor's anthology, Good Poems for Hard Times.