There's low ground fog in the hay fields; Pheasants scratch for colored insects This fine morning in September.
Last night an old woman saw an end to her suffering; She'd been staring out her window for a week. Her eyes grew large then bright then gave out. Today she waits in her coffin; Tomorrow her kin will gather. We will talk about sleep and rest, Winter's dark, the harvest, the love That binds the weary bearing Another body back to earth.
My neighbor replaces clapboards on his barn. He stands on one leg on one rung of his ladder, Leaning out, hammering, holding on, tentative, Held at the waist by a rope. I am giddy at such heights.
Today my wife brought home a load of honey. The hives are hidden deep in the grove of sycamores, Not far from the clover in the hayfields; Its color is the color of sunrise.
Tonight she will sit beside me in a cane chair. She will note how the morning glories are thick along the fence; Tomorrow, after the burial, she will launder, Sheets draped to dry on the lines.
She sleeps beside me, ending each day With what we have, sharing the work, Faithful to the ways that bring us together PYRRHONIAN DOUBT
December 22nd, a day or solar stand still. I go out to plant a stake in the ground, To say "here," "now," an elliptic point I measure carefully, thinking that in June I'll do the same, certain of the inexorable Geometry I'll have between the two stakes.
I read how an Eskimo will travel, stop And build a high cairn of stone; will travel Till the cairn is almost out of sight; Will stop and build another; then on across Moss and tundra hummock and build another.
I'm caught up with the idea that inside These measured points there's a soft death. Outside, angles arc and dip and fall In artless suicide; outside is to lie down In flame; inside is to know when and where The sun will rise and set, will be to live Like an anxious kid or hopeful god.
Between are the days when I reign and mourn; Orion will rise just east of zenith, Arcturus, Pleiades. Under cold snap and ice, summer heat, I will point and say "here," "now," and believe A glowing thing will ring my brain with fire.
Daniel James Sundahl is Emeritus Professor in English and American Studies at Hillsdale College where he taught for thirty-four years.
