Rotting Timbers

Five years

 Four contractors

All backed out.

No one wanted to

replace old

wood growing

mushrooms

in the dark

under a crumbling

foundation.

Above, birch floors

sagged and groaned

 sudden cracks split the night

She knew.

Her belly roiled,

long before

 the bedroom floor

collapsed. Oh,

contractors quoted

 her huge sums

of money to mow down

her trees, her flowers

wreck her land

with big machines

before each backed out.

An old woman

doesn’t have much

to offer those

who

would still bleed

 her dry in a heartbeat

if they didn’t have

mansions

to build…

One even dug

a mighty hole

before dismissal,

left her with a chasm

15 feet deep

looming beneath her

bedroom window.

When he stepped in

she couldn’t believe it.

Two would do the work of

ten in the spring.

by hand – men willing

to sweat in hard labor

 – impossible to find

in this world of

mindless machines.

Yet he came.

When He told me

he would work alone,

the lion

had

other commitments,

 my gut froze.

“Oh no” I wailed

“You cannot do this alone…”

Despair choked back

unshed grief…

He comes a few

Days a week – two

is plenty to be bent double

in a four foot crawl space

like an inchworm

on the move

heaving mold ridden

rotting timbers.

He comes.

That is the miracle.

Who knows how

long it will take…

But I know that

 that he will finish

the job.

His word is

Gold like a sun

without hubris

or price.

Thanks to him

I am being given

A chance

to heal

a broken

Body

whose rotting belly

 was hidden,

held captive Underground.