RAFTERS

The rafters are complaining of the bitter cold.

Have they forgotten the freeze fifteen years ago?

I barely noticed it back then, being heartsore

on what I'd done and songs about Mozamique.

Now the heart ages an hour with every creak.

They told me to put my sins where toys were stacked,

that time and tiredness would render them obsolete.

What could I but obey? I did. And yet...

In there is an old, rolled poster - a vast

prairie farm: one field, house, barns, silos,

autumn defying the frost it knows will attack.

I reach for it in my mind on nights like this,

of half-sleep, half-waiting for a pipe to hiss.

What else is there sealed off, untouched?