DEAR SIR PAUL

This weekend we went on one of our annual trips, to visit my sister on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She lives in a huge house built by her husband out of an older house. They have 12 acres of rolling land bordered by young woods, with a large pond. The pond is full of blue gill, bull frogs, wood ducks and snapping turtles. The slender trees behind the pond are reflected on its surface in long bands of black, tan, green and lavender. The lawns are dotted with flowering shrubs and trees. A large cherub faces the pond in a dry riverbed. Our dogs spent the days chasing each other across the land, wrestling in wet grass and plunging into the water. Forsythia, daffodil and lilac were in full bloom. It was an idyllic weekend in a pastoral setting.

Among the many pleasures on the Eastern Shore is visiting with friends. We walked with friends who are successful painters through a pinewood along a tidal river and inlets, and admired their English garden, from which I took a potted oak leaf hydrangea and many ideas for water gardens.

Then we went to Barry and Susan’s.

Barry and Susan live on a farm, in a 19^th century house, with sheep, a donkey and acres of grape vines. They grow flowers and asparagus and have orchards. Barry was a boat builder and has the soulful way of boat builders with wood. He is a big man, in his late sixties, bald, gregarious, opinionated. Susan, who is about fifty, is a Dane who speaks English beautifully, with the slight English accent learned by Scandinavians. She maintains the sheep, with the help of an energetic border collie mix. There is also a thin, nervous whippet whose fashion model exterior conceals the heart of a brutal hunter. Barry makes wine and maintains the property. Their house is charming. It was located miles away when they bought it, and Barry disassembled it board by board, numbered the pieces and transported them to their current location in the back of his pickup truck. It took five years to reassemble. An incredible resonance occurred in all this: some years earlier he had purchased the tools of a famous Eastern Shore boat builder. As he reassembled the house he did research to discover the original owner. It turns out it was built by the man whose tools he had acquired. Because they were the tools the original owner used to build the house, he was able to carve the intricate moldings to replace those that were lost and damaged and on the new windows and transoms he made. There is also a circular building called The Church, built of concrete block, half underground, with a wooden, beehive roof and stained glass windows. It is here Barry makes his wine, and in his latest alchemical work, where he distills brandy.

As we ate sourdough rye bread baked by Susan, and drank from a gallon jug of Barry’s dry red wine, Barry told us a story. (He tells a lot of stories). He needed a new manure spreader and didn’t have the money on hand, as it was thousands of dollars. So he decided to sell a pair of Beatles tickets he had from their first American tour, which he attended, on eBay. He got enough from the sale to buy the manure spreader, and we all thought it was pretty funny and wondered what Sir Paul would think. Barry really thought the story should be in a poem. I don’t write much occasional poetry, but I wanted to write this one. Here it is:

Dear Sir Paul

I just wanted you to know
I sold my Beatles tickets bought in 1964
Which held all memories of that show
For 50 years in the bottom of a drawer.

Sir, I’m a farmer who has to spread shit
And with all of my lambs I needed a shit spreader
That costs what I figured I’d get for that ticket
And all of my nostalgia went into the shredder.

Now like you I’m a great entrepreneur
When I go out to spread my manure.