I stop the car in mud ruts. A thaw
after a blizzard. Halfway to the shack 
where white vapor will be the happiest sight 
in Vermont in late March. Last night’s
heavy snowfall droops heavy limbs. 
 
The sun, our star of white on white,
blares full strength in up-above blue. Alone 
on a road within this snow lattice I wonder
when it falls to pieces, this exaltation
of impermanence
 
before I drive to where a young boy 
stands in a blue wool hat and black boots, 
his job to point where I should park. 
I confess. I don’t back up well.
His nod is almost complicit, forgiving. 
Maybe he knows things he does not do well.
His easiness hints that he is out here for love
of his family’s sugarbush. Sun sparkle on snow.
I say I’ve come to try hot maple syrup on
shaved ice with a pickle and a doughnut.
My first. He follows me, an old lady 
who can’t reverse well and doesn’t know
what’s inside the weathered shack –
perfume of maple and scurried work.   
The mother in me tells his brother
how well the boy performs as valet.
The sugar season treat is sweet
and sour, sticky and wet. Thumbs up
to my watcher. Another nod.
He vanishes to give more directions
 
and waves me out as I lurch back 
down his road with one bottle of Amber A 
just-made syrup, what was sap yesterday.
Whatever fear I had of marvels melting, 
nothing has. Yet. My way back 
is as fragile and elegant as the way in,
laced with that boy’s sweetness 
and white drizzled on naked woods.