They built ponds for ice and animals. Afternoons, I wade and muck from spillway to creek. Sift the silt: newt, pollywog, peeper, frog. We live on the ridge, my tiny dams in the beds. There's a pump in the root cellar and an uphill source. Clay bands trap rain, sky-coarse. We concrete the wooded springs; house the basin and reserve. Deer run east to the road and to the Clarion river west. Amid we harness water.

Here time, also, is subject to confluence. Every morning I check the Airguide hygrometer and the bronze hand hovers between dry and moist. Run-off rinses the rock-base, yet there are no great deltas. The melting was a small pond of our own creation. I have always had a great interest in lichen and where they linger. Every year I clear the fieldstones and sometimes there is celebration. We might have spun to music. Yes, celebration, and a first radio. As we dance, we stumble and steady. Narration reserves sight. When I feed the Herefords, I hear their settling. We peer under the tires, the tarp and see a glint of snow in the silage. Twilight draws close and early. Does it matter? The mountains and even the manure piles are content to erode.