HEMAN, a man from Vermont

by Adele Houston (1993)

"What makes America work?”
Grandpa slipped his soul into conversation
like a late-night visit to the cookie jar - clandestine
spirit, satisfaction, hmmnn - sweet energy.
His eyes twinkled with exclamation: "It's people!"
I suspect this old Democrat who fettered party fundraising letters
with the lavishness of a nesting Oriole - took a vital life step, the day
this question "What makes America work?" infested his psyche.
He left pastoral, rural Vermont - the farm
earnest to sweat for the sweet favors of a dream.
His hands and back, supple and furrowed as the land.
His mind, quick to cast off - long like shadows on rowed corn.
His morning - up with chickens. His retirement - retooling
the incorruptible gears of his clock - set for a Century. Meticulous
ideas, sprung from a barn -- welded by the heat of a coal stove.
The syrup runs and the sugar house glows - the morning
rises after the mountain. He is a Vermonter.
Our visits began with the drive
North. Off the concrete highway by dark. Along
riverbeds of boulders, hints of streams, long steep trails, shadows
of logged timber littered with Birches, white and yellow
a patchworked hill, night capped with Balsam Firs
Collectively we, retired
our eyes, slumped head to shoulder, quilted
grandchildren in the back seat of a '64 Impala.
There was an aimless, busy quality about the cutting
of rhubarb and asparagus, the harvesting of berries by the peck,
tractor rides that turned up potatoes, brook crossings, stepping stones
to reach snow pea vines. In the yard, there were four John Deer seats
recycled on the ride-a-round and a moon-walk grain mover among
the chickens. There were reincarnation promises - the ’52 Pontiac
car hood would clear the ice pond in winter. There was game
to be eaten, not played to win. There were mysteries
in hymns, cistern water and the Fraternal Order of Masons.
More than half a Century later - the Maple Syrup
still sweetened whatever went with eggs, still fresh
from hens in the yard. The tractor pulling what the man
could once manage by hand, the barn full
still of mystery - the conversation
often leaving Vermont and returning - like the man.

Fresh Eggs. A sign
brings back all that is Grandpa.
All that Heman dreamed in Green Mountains.