Poem 17, June 17

Memory of Driving after a Snowstorm

I was thinking about you.

Particularly I was remembering

how you looked one night

when you answered the door.

It was not the pajamas you wore

that caught my eyes in the revealing light

from the ceiling. I drove trembling,

not from cold, rather from that memory of you,

& that is all I was thinking about until I glance

to my left. I thought I would love to have a farm

like the snow-covered one in the valley, a farmhouse

nestled far back, a barn not far away.

Having spent my youth, day after day,

milking Holstein and Ayrshire, seldom in the house

until late at night, I wondered why no internal alarm

went off. I thought how, if I had another chance

to watch red soil roll fescue into a plow’s furrow,

would I appreciate it as much now as I did then?

I remembered the scent of timothy & red clover rising

up to my nose as the sickle sang through,

& how mornings as I drove thirty cows, the dew

glistened on webs across the meadow. It is as surprising

to me now as those moments were when

quail or meadow lark would fly up, whistling arrow,

& leave me breathless the way you did on the night

& the moment darkness surrendered to the light.