Suddenly

I am remembering my grandfather's slop jar,
cold and stinking beneath ten thousand dreamless nights.
I owe my life to that wizened drunkard
who staggered through my childhood
like a peddler of new lamps.

I helped him tend the large garden;
he traded my rabbits for cheap bourbon.
I sold his strawberries on the roadside;
he chased my pet hog Bessie squealing
past me to a slaughterhouse.
Yet his whiskey leavings made a toddy
to burn the fever from my breathing.

Now, as his unshaven face leers behind
the darkened glass of the picture frame,
I walk again that frightful path
through an orchard of bees back to the farm.
The milkweeds still weave in the hog pen fence; 
the chickens dance headless 
in the yard of the summer kitchen.  He's
deep in the cornfield, head bowed, arms
outstretched among the tasseled stalks
listening for wings in the wind.