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Stacking the Hay
July 7, 2007
Every hay crew is the same
Though the names change;
Young men flexing their muscles,
A seasoned farmer defying his age
Tossing four bales high,
Determined girls bucking up on the wagon,
Young children rolling bales closer,
Add a school teacher, pastor, professor, lawyer and doctor
Getting sweaty and dusty
United in being farmers
If only for an evening.
Stacking
Basket weave
Interlocking Cut side up
Steadying the load
Riding over hills Through valleys
In slow motion
Eagles over head
Searching the bare fields
Evening alpen glow
Of snowbound
Eastern peaks
Friends and neighbors
Walking the dotted pastures,
Stacking the wagons,
Driving the truck,
Filling empty barn space to capacity,
Making gallons of lemonade in the kitchen.
A hearty meal consumed
In celebration
Of summer baled, stored, preserved
For another year.
Hay crew
Remembered on
Frosty autumn mornings before dawn
When bales are broken for feed
And fragrant summer spills forth.
In the dead of winter
During the darkest blowing icy nights
The bales open like a picture book
Illustrating how life once was,
and will be again
Rainy spring nights hay
Becomes soft bedding
For new foals' sleep
Worth the dust, the blisters and cuts,
The scratchy grass inside shirts
Sweating and sneezing
To guarantee sunshine
In the barn
On the darkest days:
Communion.
Emily
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