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i t w a s no t e n o u g h
to see, in colorful maga-
zines and costly books, the country homes
and garden walks that men and women build

who have only ready money and a few ideas.
I too wished to sit sometimes drinking

tea by firelight, admiring a work of beams

and plaster, hanging fruit and herbs, good books
liberally strewn, and a sleeping cat (or two).

To which end we labored without cash, days

and even nights with saw and chisel, scraper,
hammer, knife, and plane, using such wood,
such paint, and even such nails as came to hand.

Our friends and friends of our friends remembered us
when their surplus had to go, and I went forth

with battered truck and pry bar, gathering decks

and fences long past keeping for those without
the patience to rebuild. We have learned
to watch for stones of certain weight and shape;

to lay a course of ninety-year-old brick,

to scrap a window sash to get the glass

for cutting, and to fill the oddly angled wall

with joint compound. When supplies ran short,

we turned to the acre of ground, and forked and spaded,
laying out long beds, piling them with straw,

covering the paths with leaves of oak, maple
and ash. Seeds bought last year at sale,

ten cents a pack, were sown with trembling hand.

They all did well: the new shelves are fat

with harvest. This all has come late to me. Now

we do sit in chimney-corner like English cottage-

keepers, tea in hand and cat in lap,
ready to peruse an act of Winter's Tale
or book of Faerie Queene, only to find

our eyes no longer focus on ten-point type

for an act or a book at a time. I call the youngest
child; she reads to me from Sendak, or

our mutual favorite, Potter, haltingly,
but with a will, improving as she goes.
As she sounds out words, I watch a knot

of fir collapse into the coals, and fall

to long, light sleep, with not unpleasant dreams.