The Sugar Shack

This poem appears in the Winter 2019 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

Conway, MA

His sledge was pulled by ox, or so they say,
Till midway through the season, ’91.
He even used to tap with wooden spiles
And hand-cranked iron drills. His straps and reins,
Antique before the war, were stitched by hand;
He’d wax and mend them every year in May
While listening to the ballgame on his porch.
In years where snow lay just below the belt,
He’d leave the ox at home and shoe his way
Along the trail where once the maples stood.
He’d knock the ice from off the buckets’ lids,
Unhook and yoke them, two on either side,
And get them home by dark.
                                                    Then other years
While tangled in a fog that only March
Could weave, the brimming pails like cataracts,
He’d lead the ox and cart against a wall,
Those veins of stone that course through northern woods.
The drums of sap would slosh with every bump
As, hand-to-rock, he felt his way back home.
His name still hangs above the shack’s front door,
But all the gear’s been sold or junked as scrap:
The iron kettle, jugs to be refilled,
The snow-shoes, skis, and even nails and bricks.
You might expect the reek of sugar, charred
Into the rafters to remain, but no.
The only thing that’s left, besides the sign,
The empties, and a folding metal chair—
A photo of a man, his ox and sledge,
What must have seemed an endless wood supply
To one who didn’t know.
                                                From time to time
His name gets mentioned and, without recourse
To irony, they place it in a list
Of ends-of-things like Yankee craftsmanship,
Resilience, self reliance, dying breeds.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”