Adding Up

Poplar for the fence;
town was for coffee, tea, sugar
and selling fur. The natives
were unreliable workers.
Not that they did bad work,
but they had an intractable
sense of time and after
a day and a half would disappear.
The nights of migrating rabbits.
So many they made a carpet
flowing to the warp of the floor
under the shell of the moon.
What sticks out the most is Lutz -
him and the necessity of hitting
squirrels in the eye. Anyways,
Peter and Lutz would sit around
doing nothing, as times of leisure
generously given to homesteaders -
perhaps with tobacco, thinking about
potatoes, and after some time
Lutz would get up, and Peter said:
"Lutz, where are you going?"
Asking each time to amuse himself,
for Lutz like clockwork would answer,
"I am going to do sometinks."
This exchange was ritual every visit;
a Dane and a German,
some English between them.
Lutz, where are you going?
I am going to do sometinks.
Adding up hearth stones in the wilderness.