Late Work In Early Winter
I felled an ash yesterday that dropped
in the stream below the house with a thud
my neighbor heard from across his field where he
was digging postholes for a fence to keep
his cows from getting out again.
“Plenty
of heat in that one,” he said, startling me
from behind after walking over in the din
of my saw to see just what it was
I was doing so close to his land.
“Hello, Ed,”
I said in the quiet of my shut off Stihl.
“Now all I have to do is pull it out
of the stream with my ATV.”
“Yup” he said.
“Looks like that beetle got it
like all the others.
Sometimes I think I feel one
crawling up my shin.”
He’s ninety three
but can still fix almost anything on his farm
without any help, from backing his Massey
Ferguson out of a bog by chaining six foot
logs to its high rear wheels, then
creeping out, to fixing his ancient half ton truck
with parts he’s kept for fifty years because
he knew he’d need them even more down
the road than a brand new truck.
We talked
until it was almost dark and a star
came out in the late December sky.
A breeze
blew in from the north with a chill as we talked
some more about this and that, I can’t remember
now.
“Be well,” he said.
“You too,” I replied,
and then, as he turned around after having
already turned around a couple of times
as if he were lost or had a few more things
to say but thought against it, he exclaimed,
“Will you look at that!”
“What?” I asked, looking up
from the ash.
“That bank of fog heading this way
from across my field.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said
“It’s a holy ghost the way it’s floating there,
the way it just appeared from out of the blue
as a cloud and landed in your field like a para-
chute.
“What a sight!”
But he was gone, out
of range, and I alone again, stood weeping
there in the dark that was falling like a shroud,
as if I were the king of these parts in my crepuscular
gown with the sound of a voice I’d never heard
before calling to me, then not.