east hill 2

in the house they called east hill
built in 17hundred and something
we roomed
2 others
myself all in a room
a triple they called it
where they housed us
the poor ones
segregated
as it were
the mormon, the black girl from chicago,
and me
housed and contained

Marie had a record player
we played Shaft
over and over again
and jen read her prayer book
blushing for us
while we danced and sang the songs
along with isaac
we were so cool
shut your mouth
so cool

displaced
disenfranchised
we were living
in east hill
the farm house on the side of east hill
which pastures were used for hay in summer
upon which an herd of beautiful black angus endured in winter,
Jen from denver, marie from chicago, and me

In the deep winter when the snow was high and there was a frozen crust on it so thick and hard it would hold your weight
(you could walk on (frozen) water)
you heard the cattle crunch around in the pasture outside your window
black shadows in the snowy field

the silent night under the brilliant moon whose reflected light was mirrored back in each
crystalized snow flake-dazzling holy light
brilliant and sacred

The house had another part where the dorm parents resided.
it had a separate door and a kitchen where they ate their meals when they were not required to be in the dining hall. They were separate. Civilized and remote.

East Hill had one more room where no one lived, on the north east side of the house,
a studio with a cot,
artifacts,
supplies in boxes, collected with an intention for use in art projects.
it was more of a vignette of a studio than a real studio.
No one made art there.
There was no smell of paint or linseed oil. No clay nor fallen bits of charcoal.

No artist occupied it.

The cot had an antique quilt upon it, faded soft and worn. Sometimes at night that winter, I stole there,
into that chilly room,
and wrapped myself in that tattered quilt and dreamed that it was mine,
the quilt, the studio,
east hill and the holy illuminated night.
I dreamed that I could stay.

In the hay field on East hill,
above the farmer's house,
we lay on our backs
where in the daylight
if the weather was fortuitous
and the grass was high enough to cut and dry enough for baling,the farmers and their helpers would bale hay:
On the ruts of the road where the tractors wheels had left the grass flattened
so it did not scratch and poke into your exposed skin,
there we lay in the field at night, in September,
when there was no moon and gazed up at the stars .

You could feel the slow silent turning of the earth, relative to them,
as you lay there
cradled in the soft curve of the ancient mountains
formed in a distant glacial meltdown,
feel the turning of the earth, relative to the stars.

We silently watched the stars and felt the rotation of the earth
-and there were so many-
who could have known,
as a child of the city,
where you could not see the stars, living as we did, beneath a halo of city lights,
where you could never lay upon your back in a cold dark beautiful field in Vermont on an autumn night as the temperature dropped
enough to make your toes and fingers numb

Who could have imagined that there were so many of them
and that if you kept your gaze in any quadrant of the September sky in Vermont at night for a period of about fifteen minutes you would see a shooting star

This I kept with me
this and the implicit pact of old souls to remember that night in a field in Vermont-
East hill- where the stars were bright enough to make shadows in the sharp cut grass and we felt our exquisite smallness in the multitudinous rapture of the galaxy