Pete Sullivan dropped by:
“Your barn needs work, and so do I.”
Pete had the eye
To fix old boards with new
And keep the handy knotholes through
Which swallows flew.
Pete raked and scraped away
Seventy-year-old scraps of hay
And found the sleigh
That frisky Riley drew
In nineteen-hundred-thirty-two
When snow fell blue.
Old cowbarns tilt awry
When sills go punky, and that’s why
Peter dropped by.
“Your barn needs work, and so do I.”
Pete had the eye
To fix old boards with new
And keep the handy knotholes through
Which swallows flew.
Pete raked and scraped away
Seventy-year-old scraps of hay
And found the sleigh
That frisky Riley drew
In nineteen-hundred-thirty-two
When snow fell blue.
Old cowbarns tilt awry
When sills go punky, and that’s why
Peter dropped by.
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Donald Hall’s recent books include Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry (2008) and White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946–2006. He lives in New Hampshire.