from an old poem called "Grain Elevator" (self-published in Way Stations):

 III


  
 Your two clay whistle-birds
 Are on the windowsill,
 Ready for children's lips to share
 Their flute-sounds with the real birds
 At the feeder, on the other side of the glass;

  
 You've always been the better maker,
 Turning the years and years around
 With muscular feet and fingers,
 Clay speech rising from the wheel
 To last this generation, and to serve
 The next Thanksgiving – plates, bowls,
 Pitchers waiting to ornament
 Some simpler, lasting celebration,
 Open house for the upright heirs
 Of tender hills and anxious clay.

  
 And where's that modest watercolor,
 Lit with the cold and clear Minnesota light,
 Of Granddad's granary downtown?  Standing
 Behind the rusted parallel of the tracks
 And a row of poplars, crowded out
 By warehouses and condominiums,
 Its curving columns burgeoning now
 Only with air and memory – and hidden
 Wafers of petrified wheat, noon
 Sunlight answering a lifetime's work
 Just over the treeline and the crooked streets.

  
 On a sultry day in late July
 In 1961 – when I was nine – we stopped
 In a little pasture beside the road,
 Under the shade of clustered oaks,
 With a herd of cows nearby,
 For a picnic and a rest on our way
 To visit Grandma's farm, and cousins
 In Iowa City.  And after the sandwiches
 And sleepy talk, while the grown-ups
 Snoozed among rocks and baskets,
 I wandered off a little way
 And found a squared-off family graveyard,
 The gray slate leaning in the uncut grass,
 Deep summer whispering from unfamiliar soil.

  
 Maybe it was your voice I heard,
 So long ago there in the aching depths;
 Your voice, challenging me to find
 That earthy crossroads – whistling word –
 And lay Grandfather's brooding ghost to rest.