MY SHINE THIS
NEVER TOOK GOING
Your maple syrup on the shinguard, the shaft
dripping from the tree, the silver buckets hanging.
My very high Vermont watershed inkling, dripping
honey like money like syrup; and all this before the
boiling fire. We never took down our guards, and
the late Winter snows kept falling anyway.
-
Those cows in the lower pasture, all sixteen of them,
busied themselves around the water trough, iced with
the bristles of frost and cold water. They never wanted
coming in, and never wanted going out. That lop-sided
John Deere we kept for special occasions led them
around. They followed it like stupid geese.
-
The one time that Ascor fellow, the Amish one
from the other valley, came over painting barns,
that too was a cold and funny occasion. He slid his
ladder into the chain-drop by mistake, and came
up stinking of shit, 'like a God-awful cow in
every inch' was his exact phrase.
-
And now it's syrup time again : the high mountain
air of a cold Vermont in middle March, believe me
George Eliot, already speaks for itself, and first.
Soon again it will be time to hay. Ah, again
the pleasures of May!
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