The Yoke
The only safe thing for a kid to do
while Grandpa built something was sit and watch,
or nap, or otherwise be good. Patience
he could not keep when we Tarzan-yelled hens
up into trees or bang-bang-I-gotcha-ed
down back of his workshop in the garage.
My brother couldn’t watch. He knew
Gramp was mad. But I could sit on the chopping block
and watch the shavings curl and float
down to the dark floor, admiring the art
of the strange tools that made such shapes, dismayed
when he swept them up and kept the block instead.
Even our father admired Grandpa’s work.
He told us the old gent was making things
they used to use in the old country back when.
“Yoke” Grandpa called it. “What’s it for?
Oxen!” He roared for our mother when I
persisted and pestered, “What’s oxen, Grandpa?”
Then for a while Grandpa was gone away
in the Terraplane to the old country down East,
and Dad took Jim and me uptown for the fireworks,
and Mother he took dancing. We had Roman candles
in our own yard, besides cap pistols on the Fourth of July.
Then Grandpa came back and gave me and Jim
a whole roll of Necco wafers, each.
Grandpa brought stories of folks down home, telling jokes
on Ammi and Jabez, his younger brothers,
and old Yakhop, who announced one day:
“I woke op ond coot hread so good like anyvon!”
grinning at his upside-down newspaper.
Then after supper and Lowell Thomas,
Gramp unloaded the car of boulders brought
for Mother’s rock garden. And last of all
he took out the yoke and put it back
on the pile of stock he wasted not
nor wanted. “Did they like it, Grandpa? Was it good?”
“Good for a couple axe handles, Sonny.”
Later I heard him tell my dad how stubborn
Jabez was saying the yoke was too heavy,
stubborn and foolish. Gramp had made the yoke
the way he remembered them as a boy,
with something like the pride he knew in leading
or driving the great sweet-breath’d creatures
even before he had the size himself
to heft the yoke, but helped, strong for his age.
Like Milo, the Greek who grew
to be the strongest of the Ancient Age
by daily lifting his pet calf until
by gradual perfection of his power
he lifted and carried the full-grown ox.
Likely for Milo, too, when he alone
of all the heroes of his youth survived,
the sweetest memory was of the calf,
the beginning. For farming nowadays
was nothing but tractors, tractors and trucks.
There was no one any more had oxen.
The Worcester Review, Spring 1985