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]