Rural People Tell You
I refuse to say intimate for knowing where in the barn
Shovels and burlap are piled where snow melts first in the yard
But now and then a patch of the familiar has an aura.
Farmhouse outward, the embracing widened; garden and orchard
Dense with lives seen, scented, inferred: mice, wasps, fruit.
Chores were wrapping arms around needs turned choices.
I became a miracle of resource: light wiring,
Fencing, and vanity at my own competence.
Rural people tell you they like the life, always
Finding ways to keep busy till some year they burn out
As if they were filling and trimming an old fashioned lamp.
In the old barn I trace generations by dust
In adze-marks on beams, old feathers, hoof-scarred planks.
Cobwebs trail me out, already my own ghost.