On becoming a man

When I was ten I spent the summer
on my grandfather’s pig farm,
hoeing peanuts with black men,
as exotic to me
as a trip to ancient China.

There were no songs, like the movies,
just three men and a boy
in the sun, doing a job together,
no romance and yet for a skinny boy from the suburbs
it was magic, a foreign privilege,
to be, for a few hours a day
a man doing man’s work.

Late in the afternoon,
I would watch as he worked
on whatever was broken:
a tractor, a hoe, a section of fence.
There was always something.
And always would be, he assured me.

His hands held simple magic,
rough and calloused, he would feel the broken things
like he was searching their soul,
understanding their secrets in a way I never understood,
healing them, often imperfectly
and yet making them useful again.

At dusk, we would go fishing,
walking the mile and a half to the mill pond
we shared with beaver, wood ducks and deer.
Slightly afraid of the large bass
that lived below the surface
I would never bait my hooks,
and yet, as if they were hungry for death,
each night one or two would bite anyway,
forcing me to face the scales and their gasping mouths.
We would spend an hour or two there,
rarely talking.

On Sundays we would go to church,
a small clapboard affair,
without a preacher most weeks,
we would sing and pray with neighbors
and stand under the trees gossiping
with neighbors who had lived there for generations.

Summer’s end brought tears,
for this strange place had become home
like home had never been,
and the idea of becoming a mere boy again
was hell.

About this poem

A memory, slightly twisted by fifty years and the poets pen. Every time I see old oil cans, the memory returns.

Tom