Dusting Off an Old One

I don't know if the following poem has ever been circulated for others to read, but it's an early one, and I've always liked it.

I drove through
after the snow and the wind
made the cow paths
on the hillsides
look like layers of corduroy.

Then, snows from old winters
began to drift
in my mind,
and I remembered

when
the house and the barn
shouldered the white winds
that rattled windows and
wailed through the eaves,

when
the township hired
Loomer's tracked Cat
to scratch canyons
through blocked roads
and open a route
to town and school,

when
Dad broke a horse
to harness by letting
her buck and struggle
in a deep bank
behind the barn until
she began to yield
to the pressure on the bit,

when
Grandpa died and storm-whipped
drifts built, then blocked
the way to the funeral,
so some flew in,
Russell rode up on horseback,
and the county plow
opened a way for Dad,

when
the party line told
Ma that Grandma needed
potatoes and decided the big
boy I was could walk
the blocked mile through
long, blue drifts
to take a few to her
where I was invited in
but declined
due to the long walk
to return,

when
the undergone,
unmentioned, uncounted or forgotten
storms piled up in layers of memory
like the drifts in the ditch
and shelterbelt
so that I can't sort
them out until I
get to the point

when
Brandon was born and
his soon-mother said it's
time to become the parents
we've wanted to be, and
we got in the car and it
got stuck in the snow
piled at the side of the house
in the flowerbed, and I
floored the Hornet's foot feed
until it burned and melted
the snow under its wheels
and gained the grip
and the noise
it needed
to wake the neighbors,
and we were off
to Fargo to make
a family of three.