Some Things Are Strong

A country table set for a threshing gang lunch
In the deep green shade of a towering maple.
While the sun shines hard, the men will toil at the harvest
Till the last sheaves are done.
Then they move along to the next farm
To begin their work again.

So it is with a poet
Who has spent his years haunting
The rock-strewn fields and birch-lined logging roads
Of New England.

Learning the colors of her moods,
Listening to her songs
In a thousand laughing brooks;
Wondering at the cathedral stillness
Following a January snowstorm.

I've watched the burning sun make his way
Down behind the rows of corn
And fieldstone walls.

With a tip of my hat to the crimson reds
Along the horizon line
I bid him go till he brings the morning
With him once again.

It is good to bring to mind
The paths I've trod, the lakes I've fished,
And neighbors I've met in passing,
Perhaps in a simple dooryard.

Where a dog is barking from the porch,
And cotton sheets hang on a clothesline
Drenched in the lilac air.

I've gripped a thousand calloused palms,
Seen countless weathered faces, tanned and creased
From decades behind the plow.
Their wives homespun and wise,
Radiating a beauty of inner strength
Honed by the hard times they've seen.

Did I set out long ago
To become a scribe of the Northern woods,
Recording faithfully the years I roamed these lands?
It's said I became a national treasure, a Man of Letters...
Though I feel I had barely begun.