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- 04/04/2024
- 575 Words
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Sugaring Season - 1. Sugaring Season
Drill a hole
far enough, not too deep,
and insert the clean tap, angled up,
to catch the new nectar surging from its long rest
diverting it to one’s own purpose,
collecting the spring’s sweet
promises.
~ ~ ~
On a good day,
the sun rises over a cold landscape
to bathe the hillside in clear, golden warmth,
hitting the treetops first,
then warming their trunks and feet;
After breakfast, we ride out
under cloudless blue skies,
in my father’s rusty, trusty ’49 F-5
to gather fast running sap from trees old enough
they might have voted for Wendell Wilkie;
From the roadside we wade
through snow drifted over ditches and holes,
sometimes leaving us waist chest deep
while keeping our buckets upright,
to fill the ten-gallon galvanized cream cans in the truck bed;
Riding to the sugarhouse
on broken-springed seats,
we empty our haul into the stainless holding tank
that started life in a milkhouse
four miles up and over the mountain
And later carry armloads of wood
to feed insatiable, roaring flames
beneath the sluiced evaporator pans
that gleam faintly in a dim,
almost subterranean, light
all rewarded with mom’s raised doughnuts
dipped in new syrup
when the afternoon sun
dips below the treeline
on a good day.
~ ~ ~
Steam billows
from roof vents propped open
above furiously boiling sap,
while in and out of the cloud moves the sugarer
to tend the fire and test the samples
as he waits to draw off
his treasure.
~ ~ ~
Come, with the sun
and by its warmth and ardor freely flow
as long as its beneficence can shine;
your riches run
until its rays are on the wane
beyond the western windowpane.
Despite the snow
one’s inborn nature follows its design
in mechanisms tricky to explain,
yet simple, though,
wherein the fountain is begun
by which cold winter is undone.
Let warmth combine
with crystal skies, a treasure to obtain,
a harvest we may share with everyone
should we incline,
of laughter and a sweet hello
and memory of blaze’s glow.
When shadows stain
the mountainside and sunbeams there are none
we take our rest and let the embers slow
and silence reign
beneath the moon, when we refine
your riches shared, and now made mine.
~ ~ ~
While we work,
friends and strangers stop by
to stand beneath the dripping roof beams
and accept hospitality in strong coffee
flavored with some not-quite-ready syrup
as they watch fire and man
make magic.
~ ~ ~
No substance known can be refined as sweet
As stolen glances from your dancing eyes
which make to tease and tempt and tantalize
a heart half-built, unfinished, incomplete
without a draft ambrosial and discreet,
enough to hasten happy, fervent sighs
in contemplation of my final prize,
encompassing your taste, your scent, your heat.
Yet even more I’d like to see you fed
with sugar from my own rock maple made
to captivate your tongue and lips so red,
such rainbow-colored kisses, unafraid
of all the pleasure promised in their stead
when springtime ‘gainst the winter is arrayed.
~ ~ ~
That small jar
full of amber sweetness
distilled from the maple’s offerings
connects me to summer afternoons with my dad
spent flushing lines and clearing birches
in preparation for
next year’s run.
Thank you for taking time to read this offering. Any comments you may have are most welcome.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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