Julian Aiken

Observance

Some late Sunday afternoon in November,
When frost was edging the garden
Outside beyond the path, and the dogs
Lay indolent on rugs or chairs,
You’d take up your cloth,
Holed sock or bit of old jumper,
And set to on the boots and shoes,

The kitchen growing heady
With leather and the stable tack brew
Of oil, saddle soap, wax mingling
With beef, carrots, and dough,
Your elbows sharp in that small slabbed space,
The hide of your fingers
Traced roundels on the grain

Husbanding against the parch;
You’d leave a coat of wax
Marbling like fat on the skin of a stew
To melt into the calf, and the miracle
Of the gleam when you’d done
As evening settled on the house,
A pebble nested in the closing hand of the hillside.

Outside the window, night drops like a sheet
Of black silk bowed with silver threads,
A boundary between the living and the rest,
On the hill car lights descend,
And the gravity as they discess
Like twin red stars into the pull of night,
Drags you with the inevitable weight of myth

And you see him reflected in the kitchen glass,
A slow presence in the whirring orrery
Of his family and his dogs.
He had a shelf under the stairs
Smaller than your kitchen space
And did for the family footwear
With his brush and paste and grease.

You only knew him bowed,
In Sunday ritual over counter or bench,
His iron last a rusting star,
Bunching mittened hands
And coughing spit to help the shine,
And you remember to buff your boots
Until you can see his face in them.

Julian Aiken is a writer and librarian, originally from the UK but now living in Connecticut, USA. He has published in a couple of British poetry anthologies and US literary reviews, as well as an alarming number of law library journals. His poetry is rooted in landscape, and much of his recent work has engaged with the emotional resonance of specific (mainly British) places. He has new work forthcoming in Acumen and The French Literary Review. He can be contacted at julian.aiken@yale.edu