I hear Will's soft talk to himself float up
as he climbs the stairs, the laundry begun,
a quiet murmur that accompanies him 
as he goes out to make his kayak repairs, 
doing chores in a day of heat too extreme
to stay out in but nice, in the shade, for late
breakfast with our yard's blue jays and robins
taking lackadaisical baths, and the white daisies
whose faces open hopefully to the blue.
Our talk floats up slowly to the vultures adrift
high overhead as we eye the clouds, wrung dry
of moisture, evaporating in light wind.
Looking up, Will wishes for easy passage
among those white shapes; reconsiders 
the kayak, rudder fixed now, ready to sell—
how a quiet lake would reflect it all.
                        

                       		The clockwork machines
of the Enlightenment still worked in every room, twenty
years ago: a seven-day clock telling the days of the week 
 (Sunday’s mark cuts a hole in the floor), gears turn the pages 
of five books at adjustable speed, yoked arms ready 
to copy Jefferson’s every writing act— crates 
of Europe’s gadgets shipped and carted back,
a hundred thousand dollars still owed at his death.

				We move through 
at five-minute intervals to be shown our history— 
a library of leather-bound books, French cabinet beds, 
drafts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the dumb
waiter and pass-through made to conceal the house slaves
at work as the family dined—the house restored
to its Palladian lines in red Virginia brick after collapsing
years unwanted by either side, north or south.

		  		Only small signs
mark where the shacks once stood that housed 150 souls– 
as if all this cleared mountain top, this vegetable garden
of a thousand feet growing forty kinds of peas 
for Jefferson’s vegetarian old age, the winding villa paths,
the business of making nails and fine writing desks, 
had sprung up like clockwork from gears  
amplifying a guiding hand, not the many hands
and minds at work.

				For the field slaves 
an outdoor clock, only one hand, enough to approximate 
the hours of labor between dawn and dusk, when dark 
freed them to harvest their own garden plots.