A possum circles in the highway, no doubt startled by my headlights. It’s past midnight, and no soul’s around. I drift into the other lane and let the possum do what it wants to do.

I’m listening to the radio playing the Rolling Stones and thinking of a David Budbill poem I read that afternoon, about Vermont’s colonists and centuries of following folks, seeking freedom and bread. The possum is definitely seeking her or his own version of possum bread, but freedom…? The question looms large. I haven’t far to drive this night, but the words stick with me — bread and freedom — surely two of the main drivers in my life, likely in yours, too.

The peepers are lusty along the Lamoille. The air reeks of wet mud, of that sweet fecundity of spring.

At home again, we lie down with the windows open. I hear the teenagers talking and laughing before they slip into the thickness of young sleep. To ward off the night’s gloom and cold, I’d started a small fire in the wood stove. Through the open window now drifts smoke. In these May days — both hot and chilly — I’ve moved my wood piles, again, as I tend to do, raking the bark and broken bits to dry in the sun. Foolish, perhaps, to keep a fire smoldering while the bedroom windows are open. Or maybe simply a kind of freedom.

What Is June Anyway?

After three weeks of hot weather and drought,

           we’ve had a week of cold and rain,

just the way it ought to be here in the north,

            in June, a fire going in the woodstove

all day long, so you can go outside in the cold

            and rain anytime and smell

the wood smoke in the air.

This is the way I love it. This is why

           I came here almost

fifty years ago. What is June anyway

          without cold and rain

and a fire going in the stove all day?

— David Budbill