The curlicue of time grazes from International House gift shop to windowsill
of a Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse. The herd boy sleeps. Blissed out from
escorting my uncle and his partner, as they cooked, in the shade of a live oak
rising for 200 years above the spring outside. Are you dreaming bareback one?
Of sun-warm tomatoes in the garden just past eight-foot-tall boxwoods? Perhaps
the icy trickle in the springhouse,cooling milk, eggs and barrels of homemade wine
or maybe the milky way of fireflies along the long knoll to the barn at dusk?

Deerpath, a dream come
true for two college
professors, who bought
a fixer-upper homestead
with seventy hide-away acres—
an hour’s drive from NY City—
the day before Pearl Harbor!
The old-timer, a WWI vet
—slowed by influenza and
gassed trenches—played
gentleman farmer. The other,
a conscientious objector,
planted trees for the CCC
and changed asylum bedpans.
Post war, in state college posts
(forswearing prestigious Seven
Sister offers), they canned
tomatoes, raised sheep, wrote
text books at The Farm. On campus
at their universities, they led vigils
closing down all classes—
after the Kent State massacre.