I have a large collection of images that I've boxed and stored on a shelf in my memory. Every once in awhile I like to look at them again. Some are small and light, others weigh heavy. They have accumulated over the years. I'm lucky, the box continues to fill. Let me reach in and bring up a hand full.
I'm standing in a hayfield reaching under a windrow to hook my finger in the handle of a crock jug. Hot and thirsty, I hoist the jug high in the crook of my arm and drink long, cool swallows from it.
I'm a small boy and my Grandpa Sandvig has taken me fishing. He baits my hook and throws in the line telling me, "Don't take your eyes off that bobber!" I obey, for several long hours. Small perch pull it under. It bobs. He takes me home at twilight as a full moon rises. I look at it and see that float bobbing, bobbing, bobbing in the moon, in my supper plate, in my dreams.
Goose bumps chill me when I lie in bed with a raging winter storm howling in the eaves. I'd wonder why, it seems, a woman screams inside a blizzard wind.
I'm in the barnyard. A bull eyes me from the pasture. His hooves kick up a dust cloud filled with innate hate for the man-child he spots. He charges. My fingers dig and claw into the wall of the barn, and I gain the rooftop just as he arrives.
I'm in the hayfield again. I always want to be where the men work. I'm given the job of cleaning fallen hay from underneath the stationary stacker. As it raises up to dump its load atop the growing stack the wooden main beam breaks and hundreds of pounds crash to the ground just as I've stepped away.
My empty hand shakes. The images have grown hard. It's time to return the box to its shelf. I shall return to it.
