The Return

Shot from the cannon-barrelled wind the sleet
wrapped its weight on the electric wires until
the molecules of copper lost their hold
and the wires parted.
                    Henry Jensen did his milking
by hand under a smoky cobwebbed lantern
eyeing his dead motors skeptically
and when the chores were done and he had dealt with
an icy draft and latched the doors securely
he slowly ebbed back into speculation
beside his lantern and the milking machine.
As though he stepped down from the catwalk present
where balancing kept Henry, not too agile,
in a churned-up state of thought and indignation
he found a key to open a favorite door
into the sacred past where he went swiftly
past tractor, marriage, and twisting economics
into a wide green field of lasting summer
where fat crops overfilled both bin and haymow
and man was forever worthy of his hire.
His lips twitched as he recognized a straw hat
ragged and torn on a peg where he had thrown it
when he went to get the cows on old bay Bouncer.
Henry Jensen saw soaked shirts bending at harvest,
drank from a cool jug hidden beneath an oat shock,
learned again that day stretched into the twilight,
heard tired horses shake their harness—
Then the fields, contented men, the boy and pony,
summer sunshine, the glow and glory of memory
swept like a draft back into his smoky lantern
and utterly vanished in the smell of kerosene.
The lights had come back on and caught him dreaming
he blundered out of the past and squinted painfully
at the small sun screwed into his barn ceiling
and at the lantern sputtering by his side
and shook his head and then blew out the lantern
and resumed his way along the catwalk present.
He started a motor to separate the milk, he’d
get done now in time for supper.