Ned Morrow’s steps were slow. 
He took each stairtread
One at a time. He stepped, he paused, he stood,
Held tightly to the handrail he himself
Put in (more for his wife). The cellar stairs
Were steep—but that was twenty years ago
When she was canning, and after twenty years
A mason jar was all there was. He grunted
And exhaled with each step until the bottom,
Then crossed the cellar floor, a dirt floor, carefully—
With a slow and palsied reach, clumsily
He took the jar and put it in his pocket—
A vest pocket. As deliberately
As he descended, he climbed the squeaking stairs.
He went into the pantry, to the fuse box,
And stirred a bowl of pennies with a finger.
“Let’s see,” he said, “let’s see.” 
He had to slip
His reading glasses to his nose and squinted
To see the penny’s year. “No,” he said, “No.”
And then at last he found the penny
He’s pinched it tight between his thumb
And finger. “1954” he said.
“Yes. That will do.” He switched off the main,
Then put the penny where a fuse should go,
Then powered the box and shuffled out. He coughed.
He pulled a kerchief from his pocket, wiped
His lips and went into the kitchen. He lighted
The propane stove. He poured the jar into
A pot and sat as though exhausted. His kitchen
Remained unchanged. The cabinets he’d painted
A powder blue, the color that she’d picked,
Were chipped and peeling at the corners, and plates
Collected dust. The birch flooring was black
Around the edges and in need of sanding.
The old man sighed and shook his head. He coughed
Again and wiped his lips, then carefully folded
His kerchief in his pocket. 
When the soup
Came to a boil, he pushed himself upright,
A hand on the chairback, the other on
The table. He’d readied by the stove two bowls
And spoons. He filled the bowls, then took the tray
Upstairs. He rested briefly, shuffled by
The upstairs bedrooms, then pressed the button switch
That lit the attic. Next he carefully pulled
The attic door ajar. He’d planked the attic
With wide pine flooring shortly after they
Had married. Knob and tube still climbed the rafters
And lit the incandescent bulb above
The attic’s middle. Under it, his wife,
Just as she looked in 1954,
Sat at the table in a tea length dress
And cardigan sweater. She glowed just like the lightbulb
And sometimes flickered. Behind her
There hung a calendar. October ’54
It said. On every side were boxes, crates,
And dusty furniture, but Ned’s wife smiled
And flickered. 
“There you are,” she said,
“I don’t know why you always make me wait
So long.”
“Not spry as what I used to be,”
Said Ned. “I don’t know what there’s left of use.
I really don’t.”
“And look at this,” she said,
“The last of all those vegetables I canned.
To think you made them last so long!”
“I had to.
To see you, Mabel.”
“Don’t be silly, Ned.
“I’m with you every day.”
“But not— But not so
As I can see you, Mabel,” He wiped away
A tear. “I s’pose we won’t be seeing each other—
Not now we’ve finished what you canned.”
“Oh Ned,”
She said. Wiry sparks like little shorts
Arced between lips and fingers as she dabbed
Her lips. “Ned, tell me, how’s the garden? I do
So worry that you haven’t put to bed
The garden.”
“Well now, though it near undone me
She’s bedded just the way you like. Why didn’t we—
Why didn’t we have children? I’m sick to death
Of being lonely Mabel.”
“Well, we tried.
It wasn’t meant to be. Why not describe
The weather? I do so miss this time of year. 
I always do.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
He sighed and coughed. “I’ll try. The leaves have peaked
But yet are tardy in the hollows.
I go by where you’re buried. There the stones
Are as if in a sea of gold—so do
The leaves of birch and maple lay themselves
As though to bless the ones beneath. The children,
They come and go from school. They wait for schoolbuses—
Oh Mabel, they’re like the asters, every year
They’re by the roadside anew. The farm stands
Have put their pumpkins out and steaming cider—
You wouldn’t want to hold those mugs bare-handed
But with mittens. They nicely warm the hands.
The Queen Anne’s Lace you always loved so much
Have left embittered stems behind; so too
The daisies. There’s just here and there the chicory—
As violet as the evening snows to come.
The moon grows fat with pumpkin airs—as orange
As were the stars themselves the withered vines
That in their falling trail the frost behind.
Do you remember how we’d go out hand
In hand on autumn evenings? Then as now
The early dark would show from outside what
Was inside every house. Then you’d tell me
That we should have a lamp like theirs, a chaise
And matching sofas. Such cares as then we had
I’d have again. I’d have you next to me
To watch the coming on of winter. The woodstove—
I’m hardly in the habit anymore.
There’s cold that won’t be driven out.”
“Oh Ned,
Why don’t you find another woman?
I’m sure she’d love you just the same!”
“I couldn’t.
I couldn’t, Mabel. I just couldn’t. Not
To you.” The old man spooned what little soup
Was left his bowl. The bulb above the table
Grew steadily brighter. So did she. The lightbulb
Flickered and so did she.
“I s’pose— I s’pose
It’s almost time,” he said, voice breaking. “Won’t
Be long.” He reached across the table
And he waited for the touch—the touch
That always ended with the lightbulbs bursting—
The fiery sparks that left the attic dark.
She lay one hand atop the other, both
Together in her lap. “You’ve never asked me,”
She said, “what it’s like.”
“I s’posed I shouldn’t.”
Ned answered. “I’ve a penny for each year
That we were married. I’ve been saving ’54.
You were lovelier every year. I’ve saved this—
I saved our final year together; just once more
To see you as you were. Isn’t this
Enough? Why I supposed I shouldn’t; that this—
This was enough.”
“Do you imagine me
Just lying there? Oh Ned, I’ve been with you.
I’ve always been with you. I guess you thought
The March winds nothing more than happenstance
That turned you tapping at your shoulder. Wondrous,
The yellow violets, liver-leaf and trailing
Arbutus. Why, you almost didn’t notice!—
Your haste to go from house to barn. What had you
To do so urgent?”
“Well now, I don’t know,
Except that, anyhow, the house has missed
A woman’s touch. A man may keep a barnyard
As doesn’t mind the trailing in and out
Of work and weather. Every year the oil
To change and winter tires needing mounted,
Or summer. Surely there’s still memory
Of what it’s like to live?”
“You’d be surprised,
The memories you cherish. Why I’ll tell you
What I remember. Little things. The ragdoll
I lost when just a little girl. How I looked
And looked. My father said I shouldn’t,
But how I loved that ragdoll. That night
I took my father’s flashlight from his coat
And was so slight that neither stair nor floor
Announced my going out. I was shy,
But once I saw the evening’s shutters close
And all the world’s little room bedecked
With stars and lighted by the swinging moon,
I wanted just as much to be outside
As find my doll. You’d never think a girl
Would be so brave as walk into a field—
Into the shackled bones of hardhack, catchlfly
And cocklebur, herself no more than they
In height—a bail of hay on end!—but out
I went and with my flashlight searched the nooks
And crannies where I liked to play. I crawled
On hands and knees beneath the neighbor’s fence
And barbed my jacket’s hood. October nipped
My skin, the cider of the apple’s rot
Was slick upon the wind, and woodsmoke rose
In ghastly columns while the crickets cried
Too soon!—Too soon!—crying from the hidden places
I’d played in in the afternoon. Out too,
I saw our cat and I was startled by
Her stove-top eyes. I think she must have wondered
If I was also out for vole and mouse.
She’d caught her prize—a little tail was dangling
Out of her mouth. I went into the barn
Where pulleys hung from rafters, tools on lumber
Were stacked and leaning. First I climbed the tractor
Where sometimes I would seat my doll (my mother
More often used it than my father). Next
I climbed the orchard ladder into the hayloft,
The shadows like a thousand startled birds
When I almost dropped my flashlight. Then
I crawled through all the little beds and cradles
Made by the hay bails—”
“How? Where am I? Bed?”
The old man made to sit up but her hand
Pressed at his shoulder and gently laid him down.
“How did we get here?”
“Down the stairs,” she said,
“You don’t remember.”
“But— The fuse box. Look—
Why look at you! I’ve never seen you lighted
Like this!”
“I haven’t finished Ned,” she said.
“Lie down. I’ll soon be done.”
“I s’pose you’re right,”
He answered.
“I looked,” she said, “and I looked,
And there he was, just as I’d left him, swaddled
And cradled in a bed of straw.”
“That’s it?”
The old man asked.
“Oh no,” she said. “I leaned
Like this, and leaned until I’d given him 
A kiss.”
And then the lighted woman kissed him.
The lightbulbs burst and showered the room with sparks.
She took his hand and then he was himself
Like her. She said to him, “I took my ragdoll,
I kissed him, carried him in my arms, and took him
To see the universe.”
Sometimes a neighbor
Is given reason by unreason to visit
The house next door, a tapping at their shoulder,
A whispering of the wind. They turn just so
To see their neighbor’s house and wonder how
They are. The old electrician was found
Abed and all the lightbulbs black and broken.
They buried him next his wife not two days later
And parting afterward said, “Strange, how strange,
To think that old Ned Morrow, he of all,
Would let the wiring and the fuse box go 
So long.
Knob & Tube
By me, Patrick Gillespie | November 19th 2024

Once again, I considered submitting this to journals. I checked out New England Poetry Review but $20 a page is laughable, and I’ve never been all that impressed by their journal. I checked out the submission guidelines for the New Yorker. Their response time is six months to a year!—and not to be outdone is Poetry Magazine. They take up to eight months to respond! On top of that, most journals won’t accept poetry that’s been published online, which eliminates poets like me. So, here it is, published at Poemshape. Having written this, I might be ready to finish the outline for my third novel in the WistThistle fantasy series. That will be in the next couple days and then I’ll be writing a novel again. If you have any questions about the Knob & Tube, ask away.