Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WINTER CHURNING IN VERMONT, by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WINTER CHURNING IN VERMONT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: It's joy to churn on juney morns
Last Line: "a piece of custard pie."
Subject(s): December; Vermont; Winter


IT'S joy to churn on Juney morns
When happy insects hum;
It's joy to churn when things go right,
Although you're deef and dumb;
It's joy to churn when nineteen turns
Will make the butter come.

Your wife, she ups and pours the cream
Inside the Filey churn,
And helps it with her butter-spat,
For few have cream to burn,
And then she claps the cover on
And calls to you to turn.

You pull along the broken chair,
So calm and self-possessed,
You never even stop to shed
Your cap or coat or vest;
You know it's only nineteen turns,
Or twenty at the best.

But when against the old red ell
December "Northers" beat,
And you're obliged to set the cream
Beside the stove to heat—
Say; that's the time you wish you lived
A-back on Summer street.

For eighteen hours that cream has stood
Beside the oven door;
The fire you've kept would furnish steam
To heat a Rutland store;
You're jest as 'fraid of that there cream
As tigers was of Noah.

At last you start the game and churn
Right through from ten to six,
And then you guess the room's too cool,
Or something's out of fix,
And so inside the stove you slam
Another round of sticks.

You rest an hour, then crank ahead
Till midnight cuts your trail,
When mother comes and puts that cream
A-back inside the pail:
"In churning's lexicon," says she,
"There's no sech word as fail."

Next day two stiddy morning hours
You turn and turn and turn,
And then you grab the kettle up,
And while your eyeballs burn,
Six boiling water quarts you pour
Inside that stubborn churn.

Resplendent thought—in forty winks
Of anybody's eye,
That butter comes, your mind is saved,
And mother whispers, "Si,
What will you have?" and you respond,
"A piece of custard pie."





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