Morels Dan Powers	Two years ago my friend, Vantrease, said farming would not pay his bills; he sold his milk cows, leased the Sears Catalogue Store in town.	Blackberry vines and sumac crowd the unkept pasture and the fences sag. Last week at church he held out his hands soft and white for us to see and said, "A farm is like the strength in a man's hands, you try hard to keep it and you lose it."	In the trillium beneath the hickory grove on our ridge my son and I find a few morels and drop them into a brown paper bag. Our small talk worn thin we walk back to the house through the dew wet pasture without speaking.	Here, miles from town, without his friends to see, he reaches across our silent striding in the bright spring morning and grasps my hand with all the strength of his ten years. Each of us holds on.
Design based on The United States of Poetry book from Harry N. Abrams, Inc.