Sunday Open House in the Country
Sheds are useful things, like tools,
so the vise and crank-stone grinder
were still mounted to the bench
by the back window. And measuring
containers continue to serve a purpose, so
the grade school milk bottle once used
to parse out two-cycle oil still lived,
though strangely now, by a resin owl,
who kept its own confidence. But the trace
of grass long thrown was the olfactory soul
of the place when this was his grandfather’s
farm, and the two of them overturned
Lawn Boys to scrape out undercarriages thick
with the dank green pack of their summers.
And the seasons peeled off like deep
mown ribbons through goldenrod fields,
and blackberry-brambled hillsides
rounded back up the tractor ramp,
carpeted in pine needles, to the red barn doors
of the shed, where he takes in
the tool’s myth of fixing things. The ReMax
agent lurks by the stoop with a clipboard,
looking back at him, brooding next
to the saws, and thinks he has a live one.
Craig Sipe is the author of the poetry collections Lovely Dregs and Hero Sandwich. His work has appeared in journals including The Maine Arts Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Iconoclast. He is a poetry editor and audio editor for the quarterly art and poetry journal The Café Review, Portland, Maine. He lives on Orr’s Island in Maine.