Cooling Passions

If I come down now there’ll be hell to pay.
If I hold out another week, the news
Will be all over the county, everyone
In a twenty mile radius will have been
At least once to try to coax me down.
The wife has half a dozen neighbors
Helping her bring the harvest in, and we shan’t
Lose a thing. My daughter
Stands at her bedroom window and watches
Daddy atop the barn. She combs cornsilk
Hair at the sill and I am almost
Tempted down. I’ll be out of food
In two days, but the wife
Has offered to rig a pulley,
To cook dinner as though nothing has happened
And hoist it up. Even now, she comes out,
Stands at dusk between hours and barn
And tries to talk of the day’s ordinary occurrences,
Complain of the electric bill, how cool
The early evening is, the young idiot boys our daughter
Rides the school bus with. If I were to come down now
I’d simply be that crazy man in Currituck County,
The one who sat a month on his barn,
Drove his family near to foolishness. A week,
Eight days, I’ll be the conversation
All this season at the grain exchange,
Hushed tones and wives wondering what
The wildness lends me. On the block,
Trading quicker and the wares uninspected,
I’ll get ten percent more a bushel,
My land value will climb a third. From here
I can see all the way to the Sound,
Watch that fool McClellan composting tomatoes.
The girl paits her hair in tiny, seahorse movements,
And I hold onto the roof with both hands.

Copyright 1985 GW Review. Later reprinted in Sciences, Social, Palanquin Press, 1995.