Sherry Chandler

Roofing

As a passive participant in the world’s longest do-it-yourself roofing project, I was amused, in my recent reading, to come across two poems that made me wonder whether the male perspective might be a little different.

From Wendell Berry’s Farming: A Handbook (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970)

…we bent five days
in the sun, tearing free the old roof, nailing on
the new, letting the sun touch for once
in fifty years the dusky rafters,and then
securing the house again in its shelter and shade.
Thus like a little ledge a piece of my history
has come between me and the sky.
      “The New Roof”

From David Rogers’s The Secret Knowledge of Water (Wavelength/Albireo Press, 2003)

… I stand listening in the attic,
a now useless coffee can

in my hand, and feel just
a little sad and lost.
No leaks, but I am cut off
from some process

that has always taken things
where they need
to be. ..
        “New roof, first rain”

Now, it’s true that two instances do not make a data set but it is equally true that I’ve never seen anything lyrical about a leaky roof. Mostly I view a sound roof as an instrument for the joyful music of rain. The drip of a leak is a discord.

On the other hand, this difference may be one of age. I would estimate that both Wendell Berry and David Rogers were thirty-something when they wrote these poems. As I develop arthritic creaks and pops in my own framework whenever a storm front comes through (especially a cold front), I tend to consider a solid roof and a reliable furnace as valuable as my 403b.

OR – it’s possible that I need to take a little walk around the circle and view this whole roofing thing from another perspective. Two excellent poems here. I recommend that you find them and read them in their entirety.

Related posts:

Roofing

Wendell Berry

The Secret Knowledge of Water

More mere coincidence? Irony?

Jean Tucker

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