Lines to an Absent Husband

by Frances Elmore Haley Chiles

 

Published in

Ladies Home Journal

October, 1943

Page 166

 

My dear, the house is spick-and-span

since you are gone, untidy man.

No necktie dangling from a chair,

No muddy footprints on the stair;

My ash trays, I am proud to state,

Are every one immaculate;

And when I dash upstairs to scrub,

There is no ring around the tub,

No socks left lying on the floor,

No shorts hung on the bathroom door!

 

This is the way a house should be,

I've always said -- but, well, you see,

The clock has stopped;  I can't persuade it

To run the way you always made it.

The door to the garage won't work,

And now the percolator won't perk.

My kitchen knives are dull as care

Without your expert touch, and there

Is no one to praise my lemon pies

Or comfort me with soothing lies,

Such as, "Of course you're not too fat!

Well, anyhow, I like you like that!"

 

A house, I find, though spick-and-span

Is not much fun without a man!

  

 

 

Auction Sale

written by Frances Haley Chiles

 

"What am I bid?  the auctioneer cried

After the little old lady had died.

 She was a poet as all the town knew;

Her poems were many, her readers were few.

Though she published a book bound in ivory and gold,

Except to her friends no copies were sold.

Her rainy-day money the publisher took

Assuring her many would pay for her book,

But after a while when no purchasers came

She packed them away with her vision of fame.

 

"What am I bid?" the auctioneer cried

After the little old lady had died.

 

They bid on her desk and her little old chair

And black walnut sofa with shabby horsehair.

They scrambled like mad for her marble-topped table

And grandfather's clock with original label,

But nobody wanted the white-and-gold books

Full of elegant poems of birds and of brooks,

Of violets and roses and skies that are blue,

And the goodness of God and love that is true.

 

"What am I offered?" the auctioneer said

As he held up a volume that never was read,

"What am I bid for the lot?" he began . . .

"Sold! For a dime . . . the second-had man!"

 

 

Published in Florida Magazine of Verse,

May, 1944

 

 

The Andrew Jackson Cake

written by Frances Haley Chiles

 

How well do I remember just before the county fair,

A curious excitement used to hover in the air,

With Grandma looking serious, for she was going to bake

By a secret family recipe, her Andrew Jackson cake!

 

She always told the miller just what he ought to do

To grind the finest kind of flour from wheat that Grandpa grew;

And I think the hens were cautioned -- no nonsense would be stood,

For they must lay the choicest eggs that any poultry could.

 

And then Aunt Sallie came from town and Cousin Mary Lou

And I was let to run and fetch and watch the mixing, too;

A little girl with braided hair and freckles on her nose,

Bursting with importance from her head down to her toes.

 

We gathered in the dining room, where tall pier mirrors caught

The busy preparations -- and secretly I thought

How the Yankees fed their horses from the lovely sideboard drawer

When Grandpa was a soldier back in the Civil War.

 

The mammoth yellow pudding bowl was got down from the shelf --

No one presided over that but Grandmamma herself.

The flour was sifted twenty times by cousin Mary Lou,

While I kept count on paper -- even nineteen wouldn't do.

 

Three dozen eggs Aunt Sallie broke into the old blue platter

Made by Enoch Wood, they said . . . Granny stirred the batter

While I brought willow switches all peeled and bound up tight

To beat the whites of eggs with until they stood up light!

 

Then when the solemn measuring and mixing were all done,

We bore it to the  kitchen and the baking was begun.

We walked on tiptoe, whispering, and almost held our breath

For fear the precious cake would fall . . . nearly scared to death!

 

Presently a heavenly smell was floating in the room;

Then Grandmas took a nice clean straw plucked from the kitchen broom

And stuck the cake most carefully to see if it was done,

And I felt like a soldier when at last the battle's won.

 

When we climbed into the surrey and took it to the Fair,

The judges "oh-ed" and "ah-ed" and said, 'Well I declare,

Miz Ann McMurty's cakes are still the finest in the land."

They put blue ribbons on it while I squeezed Granny's hand.

 

I inherited that recipe when dear old Granny died,

But cakes I make are not so good, though many times I've tried

With package flour and store-bought eggs and labor-saving fixings,

With thermostats and this and that to do the heavy mixings;

But no electric oven with thermometer can bake

The truly regal splendor of that Andrew Jackson cake!

  

Published in Florida Magazine of Verse,

Autumn, 1941

 

 

Rehearsal For A Hero

written by Frances Haley Chiles

 

The lake is smooth and polished

As a blue crystal floor.

Not the faintest ripple

moves toward the shore.

 

Still are the bonnets,

Still are the reeds,

Save a silver bubble

Where a minnow feeds.

 

Strange that an airplane

With a broken wing

Should rest there so peacefully,

Not remembering

 

The brave young cadet

Learning how to fly . . .

Rehearsal for a hero

Learning how to die!

 

 Published in Florida Magazine of Verse,

January, 1944