Haying season

Haying Season( for PT Maguire)

Dust frozen by sunlight
precious time captured
like spiderweb dew in dawn rays
this brotherhood of men
working like the Chinese
ass-up-headdown-wheelbarrow-legg-ed struggle
iconoclasts of the land
still striving
while the air conditioned proletariet
dismisses sweat
disdains the communion of the land
assumes food comes from a package.

the fishbowl of Blue
Sky with fields
Hinting at the curvature of the earth
This is where the Sun is Harvested
Turned to Hay
Neat square bales
in clouds of green dust
wearing yellow googles -
Moose-hide chaps still stink
of Injun piss as they protect
the legs from the stem stratched rythm
Knee-up-kick
the Bales going up
rumbling swaying old blue truck,
a deck in a sea of blue sky and
brown stubble

Smelling sweet in the stifling heat
Top of the Barn
tin roof pinging
with the blast of afternoon heat
dust rising
captured by light through
film cobwebbed windows
Great walls of green
going up 50 pounds at a time

Thousand bale days
wring water from our souls
so deep only the lake
can quench our thirst
immersed
home-made-beer sweating
in a mug
the first pint hardly tasted going down.

the Old man Prayerfully rates the day
fingers folded after a meal fresh from the garden
"with two hands and a will..."sez he"Any thing can be accomplished.."
and then he drifts off
head swaying to the crunk of the baler
lost in replaying the cloud-movie behing his eyelids.

so the day ends
swimming into sleep
dust frozen once again by sunset rays
dew formed by the breath
of the sleeping land.