Ithaca 1999

I helped heave the barber’s chair into the back of the pickup truck
of the couple who had driven all the way from Connecticut to haul it off.
When they drove away, we slipped back inside the split-level,
with its rose and honey sponge-pawed walls,
where, comically aproned, you cut the crusts from sandwiches
of clotted cream and watercress in a parody of English high tea.
Your spaniel zigzagged across the pasture,
cornsilk ears fluttering like banners behind her.
I slept heavily in the ocher guest room beneath the cow skulls
and mirrors framed with cedar, strung with knuckles of garlic.
That was the last time. The next time
the leaves were turning scarlet on the mountain
and you would throw back the curtain to show off the larder
stuffed with cans, the water purifier, the flour grinder.
Canisters of lamp oil. Bottles of vitamins. Cases of bourbon.
You don’t want to be in the city when it happens, you said.
They’ll be chopping down telephone poles for timber.
The hands of the crossbows counted down the hours
from their pegs above the galoshes in the closet.
Not a barrel in sight, but box upon box of cartridges.