He kept coming here.

On the low-skied landscape rolling behind his eyes
country feelings, settled and gray
as weathered farmhouses left leaning in Kentucky fields
among broomsage and cedars.

He kept coming here
a deer drawn again and again to a saltlick.

Pulling away a warped, split board, he found beneath
it another just as old but seasoned and straight,
sawmill fresh.  He drew a rusty-headed nail,
found its shank bright as the day it was driven.

Dismantling country feelings.

Tearing down, building up again
from what was salvaged.

In that farmhouse, under that low sky in November,
he read his past like a salt-caked sheet of newsprint
used once to paper a smokehouse shelf.

A coming shape, a new room and view,
rose from old flooring.

Two times mingled.  Fresh sawdust
spumed yellow as sunlight from old timber.

[Restoring an Old Farmhouse by Jim Wayne Miller]