Poems by Jay
There's an old fallen down sugar house out in one of the overgrown pastures. We asked the Shaws once why they had a sugar house out there, so far from the house. They said, oh, because that's where the sugar maples were. We tapped 1,000 maples back in the day, they said. Both Peter and I looked puzzled. We're not expert on tree identification, but it seems like there's just not that many sugar maples around here. Oh no the Shaws said, the trees were all blown down in the hurricane of '38.
Here's a poem about that same hurricane by my friend Jay Wilkinson.
Round Barn, September 1938
Round the Cape Verde Islands
nature constructed a storm
that defied the curve of earth
and drove across the sea,
to throw a second story surge
and twenty-five foot floods
through New England's lower valleys.
It climbed Green Mountain spines
and over the top of Whittier Hill
then salty seventy knot winds
tore at eaves, lifted shingles, then the roof
and creaking, shifted round-frame stresses.
A dark roar of wind and panicked heifers -
the milk painted pride of Walkerway Farm
collapsed in a pile
of splinters, dust and memories.
Another poem by Jay:
In Peacham
Peter's precious lettuce
and Maryellen's mustard greens
struggle through sheep-amended soils
slower than the ancient perennials:
feldspar, quartz and granite
rising unbidden,
everlasting elemental Appalachian leveling.
