Baling
Hay
Neca
Stoller
Scythed
down how flat the pasture is:
Olive curing rows of grass fade and silver.
Behind drumming machinery,
like a wagon train,
fresh
bales circle the field.
Tall exhaust stacks - rusted, split -
leak
smoke.
Their cryptic
signals
puff,
then drown in the humid
air.
The
way the smut and dust paints
chin, cheeks and corded
arms.
He looks as though a palette
of charcoal and gray spilled,
tracing
its idea of Guernica.
Carved with rivulets of sweat,
eyes noses fingers
juxtapose
at acute angles.
Meanwhile,
the ripening hay.....
all over a fragrant smell
prevails
Slowly an iced mason jar,
black
cold tea thick with sugar,
cracks the encrusted grime.
His mouth, here and there, appears.
Bleached
sky- in every place the sun.
The only shade, a bulky hay baler
dragging its round shadow
Like a mace, the spectral spikes again
reap his head, groin and
dead blue grass.
The
2River View, 2_1 (Fall 1997)
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