Onions and Love Letters

It's a year now since thee went to war.

In meeting we speak against this war

but what good does talk do: better to do something.

So thee went to heal and I stayed here to run this farm.

The seasons have run a full change.

The leaves are again gone from the trees.

The branches reach into the sky grasping -

what they grasp for I do not know.

Day after day I write these letters

wherever I can find a moment.

My pen scratches, slows, I dip it in the pot

of ink I made last fall of butternuts.

The words chase in my head

as I write:

snow fell yesterday

the hens aren't laying

peeled onions for chowder

spun three skeins.

Now it etches memories, rememories.

Walking on a day in January

warm as March on rocks by water,

an ocean I have not seen in too long:

reading Shakespeare and Longfellow

far into the night.

Now I put down my pen to bring

in an armload of wood.

The snow on it melts, runs in

thin ice streams over the bark.

The monotony of these days is what drains me.

A millstone grinding corn round and round

until the once oddly shaped kernels are

smooth meal all alike: my edges are rough.

Up at five, moving constantly, the only time

I stay still is to sew and knit

blankets, bandages socks of blue.

Strange that a piece of cotton -

the cotton that caused this war that took

you from me will travel farther than I.

I miss thee.

Yet my love

an onion has many layers.

At its core it is green and sharp to the taste

but smooth to touch, the layers form

in among themselves, holding.

A simple thing you might say, an onion.

The outer layers, they go in rings rougher harder

to touch though their taste is sweeter.

Slice through and the rings fall flat

but they are buried as well

by a skin paper thin and flaking.

These little details I write thou of keep

me trapped sometimes

yet it is these details that fight a war,

that make a life.

Not everything can be an adventure: few things are.

So I will go on running a farm and thou will go on healing

and we will go on writing these letters

and someday there will no longer be a war

and thou will come back

to put together the rings of an onion

thy loving wife

Sarah Makepeace, February 1864

-Abby Chandler