Frederick Wilbur Verse-Virtual 2017 February

February 2017

I was brought up and still live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia so I rely on imagery derived from the natural landscape to explore human relationships. My wife, Elizabeth, and I have two daughters and three grandchildren. I have been an architectural woodcarver for over 35 years and have written numerous articles and three books on the subject. My poetry has appeared in Shenandoah, Green Mountains Review, The Lyric, The South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, and others.

Rendering a Soap Poem

Instead of images, smells:
bacon drippings scooped from a Maxwell House can,
the Dudley cookstove expels

a wisp of woodsmoke, a chew of Red Man
on this winter evening. The ham fat wheezes
and pops like an old codger, the pan

twitching, the first crisp crackling teases
the children, the air is rank and deep,
but this mingle of fats seizes

our imaginations and we leap
to conceit, calculating the lie
which soap makes of grease. The heap

of ash left by fire is slaked for the sly
hydroxide which burns in water as furious
as truth. Mixing the fat and lye

we conclude our curious
recipe—how plant and animal are combined
like ingredients in a luxurious

rhyme, like two in marriage entwined,
scrubbed clean, and smelling so refined.

(first published in Virginia County, VII, 2. 1989)

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