It came to me to sell the family farm, shift its failures to a man who planned   to occupy the place for recreation, to hunt the deer that spook and shadow in the pines,   my job to consign to another my granddad’s stunted grove of walnuts planted—against the forester’s advice—   with his hired man Tiny, who died by stepping in front of a train, though first he roped   his dog Bear to a nearby tree, stapling a note that read “Take Care Off Me.” Does anyone   remember this fat fact—a loaf of toast and a dozen eggs was Tiny’s daily breakfast meal? Give it   to me. I’ll remember that bit too. I fished that muddy pond just once, its manurey slurry,   slipped downstream from the Tulius brothers’ hogs,   shot the one buck trophied on my wall whose crippled hoof had slowed him   dangerously down. In town again I pulled the locks off all the doors of the barn—   empty now, October now, the deer not yet come to any harm.