Poem: The Sugar Shed
I know a place deep in the woods,
Beside a bubbling stream.
A place where folks once talked and toiled.
Now silence reigns supreme.
And in this place they made what was
A pleasure and a staple.
T’was here they laboured to extract
The sweetness from the maple.
I stand beneath the naked trees.
The silence here is vast.
I step inside the sugar shed,
And listen to the past.
Three people I hear talking now
As if they were beside me,
A man, his son, and grandson.
As I find a post to hide me
I eavesdrop on the threesome,
While they’re tending to their chore.
They’re planning this spring’s planting,
Spring of 1894.
“The winter wheat will come on soon.
We’ve had a good snow cover.
And there’s forty furrowed acres
To get seeded down in clover.”
Outside the door the morgan mare
Is munching on her hay.
She’s still in harness, ready to
Hitch up and draw the sleigh.
The air is filled with scents
I can identify so well,
The hardwood smoke, the steaming sap,
That kerosene lamp smell.
A golden spray of sunlight
Now pools out across the sky.
The treetops feel the warmth
And their clear blood again runs high.
The young lad hitches up the horse.
They trudge along the trails.
The horse – she plods along herself
The boy – he fetches pails.
He pours the cold clear liquid
From the pails into the tank
That sits centered on the sleigh,
And you can hear the buckets clank.
Then he runs back with the empties,
Hangs each one back on its tap,
Grabs another one beside it,
Stops to take a sip of sap.
And out beside the sugar shed
His fathers’ axe is ringing,
As it bites into some beechwood
That his granddads’ busy bringing.
His mother and his sisters come
To tend the vat and fire.
They’ve fed the cows. The milking’s done.
They’ve opened out the byre.
The men now head back to the house
As fast as they are able.
There’s coffee on the kitchen stove,
And breakfast on the table.
How I treasure these lost places
With their corners frayed and furled;
Precious wrinkles in the fabric
Of our too frenetic world!
