On Seeing Part of a Cast Iron Stove, Rusting Behind a Shed

We didn’t know they were hard times, 
            even though that winter they had to borrow our hoard:
            seven dollars from me and five from my sister. 
            Our days were the usual homemade loaves, 
            peaches we’d bottled, our own half-beef in the locker, 
            the rest to needy relatives and to pay 
            for freezing and wrapping. 
Mother waxed the linoleum with Simonize every Friday.
            To shine it, we slid across at high speeds 
            on old flannel shirts. My face scalded 
            with embarrassment that we were characters 
            in the Drama-in-Real-Life she wrote and asked me 
            to proofread. She was sending it to Readers Digest, 
            and I, a sixth grader, tried to talk her out of that. 
I have to do something, she said, for money. 

It was a long winter. The woodshed grew hollow 
            before signs of thaw. By March, 
            Dad was pitching scant throws of hay 
            onto snow for hungry cattle. 
That was the year he got down his old skis, 
            their wood grain worn and unpolished. 
            Pulled behind the runners of his hayrick on Saturday, 
            we fell off again and again before we reached the stack,
            waited for him to pitch the bed full. 
He was silent through each wait 
            for us to catch up, our snowpants and dark coats 
            frosted thick from the snow where we fell, 
            our fingers stiff and slow to retie rope 
            where ski straps had worn thin. 
Drying out near the woodbox, we grinned and shivered
            while Mother carefully fed the cast iron stove. 
            Dad’s platform chair rocked, 
            rocked, in the silence.