Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.”
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

“When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.
“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
‘If he left then,’ I said, ‘that ended it.’
What good is he? Who else will harbour him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there’s no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.’
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’
‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’
I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there’s someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.”

“Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said.

“I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.”

“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too—
You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognise him—
I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.
Wait till you see.”

“Where did you say he’d been?”

“He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.”

“What did he say? Did he say anything?”

“But little.”

“Anything? Mary, confess
He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.”

“Warren!”

“But did he? I just want to know.”

“Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three times—he made me feel so queer—
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—
The boy you had in haying four years since.
He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On education—you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.”

“Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.”

“Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!
Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it—that an argument!
He said he couldn’t make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong—
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay——”

“I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.”

“He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.”

Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
“Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.”

“Home,” he mocked gently.

“Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.”

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
“Silas has better claim on us you think
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,
A somebody—director in the bank.”

“He never told us that.”

“We know it though.”

“I think his brother ought to help, of course.
I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing to—
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he’d had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
He’d keep so still about him all this time?”

“I wonder what’s between them.”

“I can tell you.
Silas is what he is—we wouldn’t mind him—
But just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He don’t know why he isn’t quite as good
As anyone. He won’t be made ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he is.”

“I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.”

“No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.
He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You’ll be surprised at him—how much he’s broken.
His working days are done; I’m sure of it.”

“I’d not be in a hurry to say that.”

“I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.”

It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

“Warren,” she questioned.

“Dead,” was all he answered.

Have you ever done enjoyable work,
But toward supper time,  
After a long, long day,
A satisfaction sets in,
Almost a fullness,
A readiness to stop for the day...

I know this feeling.
I understand Robert Frost's poem,
"After Apple Picking."

I loved haying on the ranch,
But after 14 hours' roaring up and down
Long alfalfa fields,
I was content,
Ready to shut down for the day,
Ready to climb down from the old John Deere,
Ready to walk, dusty, to the old truck
Waiting in growing darkness.

I recall listening for sounds of night coming on:
Crickets rasping against the cooling day,
Nighthawks' screeching, veering for insects,
Soul-mourning cries of coyotes,
All teamed against the ghosts of day:
Tractor's roaring echo in my ears,
Thumping memory of lurching over clods,
Dust clogging my itching eyes and throat....

The old tractor, too, was content
Sitting silently,
Cooling in the twilight.

There were three in the meadow by the brook
Gathering up windrows, piling ***** of hay,
With an eye always lifted toward the west
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger
Flickering across its *****. Suddenly
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.
The town-bred farmer failed to understand.

“What is there wrong?”

“Something you just now said.”

“What did I say?”

“About our taking pains.”

“To **** the hay?—because it’s going to shower?
I said that more than half an hour ago.
I said it to myself as much as you.”

“You didn’t know. But James is one big fool.
He thought you meant to find fault with his work.
That’s what the average farmer would have meant.
James would take time, of course, to chew it over
Before he acted: he’s just got round to act.”

“He is a fool if that’s the way he takes me.”

“Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something.
The hand that knows his business won’t be told
To do work better or faster—those two things.
I’m as particular as anyone:
Most likely I’d have served you just the same.
But I know you don’t understand our ways.
You were just talking what was in your mind,
What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting.
Tell you a story of what happened once:
I was up here in Salem at a man’s
Named Sanders with a gang of four or five
Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.
He was one of the kind sports call a spider,
All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy
From a ****** body nigh as big’s a biscuit.
But work! that man could work, especially
If by so doing he could get more work
Out of his hired help. I’m not denying
He was ******* himself. I couldn’t find
That he kept any hours—not for himself.
Daylight and lantern-light were one to him:
I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night.
But what he liked was someone to encourage.
Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind
And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—
Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.
I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks
(We call that bulling). I’d been watching him.
So when he paired off with me in the hayfield
To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble.
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders
Combed it down with a rake and says, ‘O. K.’
Everything went well till we reached the barn
With a big catch to empty in a bay.
You understand that meant the easy job
For the man up on top of throwing down
The hay and rolling it off wholesale,
Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.
You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging
Under these circumstances, would you now?
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,
Shouts like an army captain, ‘Let her come!’
Thinks I, D’ye mean it? ‘What was that you said?’
I asked out loud, so’s there’d be no mistake,
‘Did you say, Let her come?’ ‘Yes, let her come.’
He said it over, but he said it softer.
Never you say a thing like that to a man,
Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon
Murdered him as left out his middle name.
I’d built the load and knew right where to find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for
Like meditating, and then I just dug in
And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust
And caught sight of him treading-water-like,
Keeping his head above. ‘**** ye,’ I says,
‘That gets ye!’ He squeaked like a squeezed rat.
That was the last I saw or heard of him.
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.
As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck,
And sort of waiting to be asked about it,
One of the boys sings out, ‘Where’s the old man?’
‘I left him in the barn under the hay.
If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.’
They realized from the way I swobbed my neck
More than was needed something must be up.
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.
They told me afterward. First they forked hay,
A lot of it, out into the barn floor.
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle.
I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple
Before I buried him, or I couldn’t have managed.
They excavated more. ‘Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.’ Someone looked in a window,
And curse me if he wasn’t in the kitchen
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so clean disgusted from behind
There was no one that dared to stir him up,
Or let him know that he was being looked at.
Apparently I hadn’t buried him
(I may have knocked him down); but my just trying
To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so’s not to meet me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in his garden:
He couldn’t keep away from doing something.”

“Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?”

“No! and yet I don’t know—it’s hard to say.
I went about to **** him fair enough.”

“You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?”

“Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.”

Summer field at rest; alive.
We stopped haying twenty-five years past.
Birds and bugs, golden rod and asters and
Worts, spiders, voles make it their home.  We mow
Once a year.

And it breaks my heart.  Good-by flowers for
Honey bees.  Cover for warblers,
Mama turkeys and broods.  Bedroom for deer.
Hidden lunch room for ground hogs
Until Jack Russell breaks their necks,

At least of the little ones.

Old hog mama requires my intervening shovel.
Otherwise she'd shred Jack's face.

                                              9/23/2012

A late afternoon drive
through the countryside.

A lot of rolling hills
dotted with fields and farms.

Haying time, first of the season.
Old roads potted with holes,

asphalt turning to dirt...
we lay plumbs of dust.

The suddenness of a summer shower,
then thunder rumbles, the rain begins.

When the water hits the dirt
it almost looks like little atomic bombs.

We stop the car, not being able to see
through the windshield.

The farming community called Old Barns,
with a Lady Slipper Lane and the whole bit.

Silos breaking the sky, drizzle equals puddles,
puddles to drive home through.

A lick and a promise, the sweat of the gods,
nothing  comes close to a tour by the bay.

In 1814, my grandfather’s barn collapsed
from the greediness of the farmer’s
haying to their own delight
and stocking the barn to the brim
with more hay than it was equipped to hold.
It broke and fell on top of them,
my grandfather too.

You have to stop letting
the weight of the world
make a home inside of your heart.
You can take it all in,
and shake and sob until
you can’t feel any longer,
but don’t linger.
Don’t stop feeling,
but before every problem you face
and every demon you meet,
reach down deep inside and grab
all the pieces that don’t belong in your soul,
because your heart can break,
and it will,
if you don’t realize you can’t heal the world
(but please, don’t stop trying)
but first, don’t let the dark camp,
scab, and scar inside of your heart
so that you can no longer
see the light.

I had been, through much of my youth,
Under the care and tutelage of my Uncle Virgil,
He being the sole remainder of my father and his brothers,
The rest taken by life’s wind and wuthering,
Anzio and clogged arteries, sneak attacks and suicides.
The final remnant of my patrimony
(But an anomaly among them,
Squat and blocky where his brothers had been all willowy height,
Bestowed a high reedy voice among a half-dozen baritones)
The one entrusted, due to attrition as well as temperament,
With the shepherding of the family farm
Through another generation
(The original design involved my father taking the reins,
But, though he came to the plowed rows, scrubby old apple trees
And lumpy moguls of the place with the hopes and misigivings
Of a soon-to-be- jilted suitor,
He was a dreamer, a man of little to no pragmatism,
Ill-suited to the grinding and unromantic nature
Of cutting dead cows from stanchions
And bringing order to barbed wire,
The mantle then falling to the youngest brother,
But he proved too easily enveloped in life’s minutiae,
And he departed with a locked garage door and idling engine,
The official version being terminal absentmindedness
While giving his antiquarian Buick a tune-up.)

I had come over to help out with the haying,
Its timing, even by small-farm standards,
Subject to Nature’s whims and caprices,
Process needing to be completed in narrow windows of time
When the tall grasses were just-so dry enough to cut,
Requiring marshaling the forces for attack
At a feverish pace before the next thunderstorm
Marched over the hills and ancient glacial moraines,
Leaving ill-timed efforts all for naught
(My contributions to the cause a hit-and-miss thing,
I being my father’s son after all.)
We’d finished up with some daylight to spare,
A thing to be celebrated,
My uncle and I repairing to the porch for beer and small talk.
In the course of ruminations upon things great and small,
I’d mentioned how I’d changed my considerations
On the ostensibly unchanging hillsides,
How they were once foreboding, claustrophobic things,
Walls to be surmounted like some pine-topped Maginot Line,
But now comforting, benign things,
Cradling me gently, almost imperceptibly yet lovingly.
Uncle Virg took a pull from the bottle and slowly shook his head,
What those hills are, boy, is dirt, just a bunch of **** rock
Ground up by the big ice, and it would have been nice
If they’d made a better job of it,
Not that they gave a tinker’s **** about us then or now.
Son, I listen to you talk, and I despair of you.
Why, what would your father say?
He took another drink, then laughed softly.
Oh, hell, never mind. I know what your father would have said,
We drank more or less in silence after that,
The sun making various sherbert pastels
Of reds and oranges and purples,
Though I thought it perhaps for the best
Not to comment upon that particular phenomenon.

As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.
Thus the early warning for uninitiateds,

Pomposity, this is not, yawn

hypnopompic (adj.)
"pertaining to the state
  of consciousness when awaking from sleep,"

Accepting the hand stretched toward my spirit,
the idea that is me, in your mind, tenere- root
tension, the push and pull
stretch the minutes into days, yawn
hear,
the rolling of the dough, sticky, folding
butter and sugar and cinnamon in, ah,
coffee, creamed
morning,
in paradaise,
pomp and circumstance, ministers
solemnly stepping up
recommencing the quest, master.

To make a form for spiritual consideration,
of worldly wisdoms and philosophy's guides
granted all with access to the raw data of us,
clear text incontextual time locked eternity,
part one

all we may know, no real secrets lost to time,
all we may know, upon waking in confusion, is

and was known, upto now, but no further, see,

between thoughts comes time, no force felt,
think, what reading really is, is us thinking again,

a gain, a step in the only way time relates
every thing to next, smooth
only on the surface
tension
of our enclosing bubble
of being,
bound
by words we never read, really,

while amused
at the talent
of our acting friends,
where everybody knows your inclusion
in an active Dunbar herd
of potential help,

the one in need, indeed, met

the wedoms, most common groupmind limit,
the size of a military subgroup, hereditary
strategic deployable drilled
to respond
to drum and bugle calls,
now radio, neuro linked,
orders conveyed to science users,
ready made from those so usable,

second string and above, do what you love,
ding, the bell, another round, ding

imagine the power of players taken in,
swallowed whole by an ancient serpent ,

slowly growing from worm to wise will

to oppose untrue why factors, long used
to beautify the imaginable future, if,

eh, Rudyard, who were you watching return
from Balaklava?
Did she force you to see?
Lady Elizabeth Southerden Thompson Butler,
Ai, ai, we totally know, yes,
must be some history in her string of names,

but,
what she projected on to the medium
what she witnessed in her spirit,
she showed us, the after facts,
the faces, the mud, the blood,

weariness and desperation, hope
captain, tell us, that's enough
war for the world to see,
life in color on canvas,
the message is the medium,
in it's pre-acrylic hues from tubes,
the latest advance in painterly tools,
and new colors, brighter, longer lasting

to let the spirit bearing the message,
alive until you stop, and realize,

you may, today, stare all day
at fifty-seven windows into
Lady Elizabeth's
upper crust wisdom,
becoming today's prompt,

To ask, if you do not find it easy,
my assuming you used your will,
voluntarily, to find the art abstraction
taken from the mindshare gone global,

my friends in all the lands enclosed
within the world wide web lattice work,
filtering the light we see through
to objects in mind reminding us,

of awe, the state, aha,
we agree, we sometimes weep
for those who live in foaming lies,

remains of old nursery fixed hates…

Have you gazed a while,
at the messages from Elizabeth?
Have you zoomed in to see
the faces on the nameless,

the glorious-less role call,  no.

I can't not go again, you see, war
and me, we
be adversarials and unreconcilable,
I swore to oppose all oaths to
pomposity, solemn turns first lie
to principal reason, first need met,
Art, making for the sake of making,
in the chaos, see the beauty, we live,
we who use words to capture thoughts,

think, we words, are no longer thoughts,
nay, we know, knowing, science, is
knowledge held as true, even known lies,
and the multitude of uses pride contends
is good to force feed kids, stacking order,
status quo, master and emissary, in one.

As a we form sapience spiritually coherent,
we all must protect,
free thought, raw truth, full function,

breath, modulating noise,
to seem musical.

Whew, hew and cry, scything on…

yes, self analyze,
woe is the skeptic
in America today,

or, no, the other way, today, in doubt's
haying day, sickles at the ready, stone honed,
…
least labor, follow the leader on the right,
starting from the left, northmost corner,
sweeping south along the terminii line,
proprietary responsibility border line,
work worth
sweat, taken as a feature,
water as a gift,
given by the fortuitous cloud catching
streams of conscious muse using,
refreshings, cool, new media,
cool, new colors, look, Spot,
see the images of all the worlds finest art,
right there on your globally tied in common-
uni-cating we conforming information device.

see close, zoom in, zoomers were born to this,
- old boomers who saw these images
- saw them in CMYK
- on shiny magazine paper,
- the message was not as loud as now.
Peace maker companions,
sharers of the one bread's condiments,
take some pride in pulling down imaginations
making peace, where a clamoring lobstrosity was,

warfare in the spirit, make sense from non-
sensible factors determining will to become,
still, observant, ignoring not knowing,
being left in the story your father's faith told
submission to authority, only obey,
-- line up, dress right, at a glance,
-- proceed standing at attention,
= be the message sent by the Bearskin helm.

will-less, submitted, under the orders
in the message most recently made law,
all those covered under the blood of victims,
in order to save the world, we must be ready
to let it evolve, no sweat,
- death has no sting, no lie,
- duty however is a killer,
- and pride the very worst.
Live
as might your favorite Bible character say,
sufferage is alright, wait and see, right,
you can choose your truth,
do the math,
vote by references to
chirality, right, or sinister,
the spinning difference is awesome
we mesh, fi, my talent, fits you
we become a one mind team
involved in mortal conscious
answers to sworn confusions,

Will to ever learn,
is a feature all spinning things use,
to stay in formation as we scythe through
ongoing knowing life is hard,
knowing is easy, taken slow,
bringing in the sheaves,
golden grain,
once worshipped,
worth the sweat,

laughing when the works all done,
was the winter breads and stewed roots,
all sets and settings we may imagine, on earth,
some sense we all share, every where we connect,

all at once, the world was enclosed, in clouds
of precocious proprietary secret methods,
right way to do things, procedures,

reusable code, rituals, rules and consequences,

object, entity in mind, abstraction, a pinch of now.

This is how all that ever matters must begin
in a literary effort akin to scything sown seed,

in a co-op thought pattern, me,
to you, feedback in the medium we share,

the air we breathe, but more enduring ties,
realizable already imagined known, yes,

the very idea that yes contains, on contact,
I know, be it how first or why, I care less,

yes, carelessly I spill my neuronic guts
distinct chakra reasonings, as factored costs,

go with your gut, but
first, grow ripe past pompous display,
look away, look away, do not open

the source code we think we see,

ah, me, too late.

In twilight
the sickle moon,
waits for the dark.

What a ****.
Roses in bloom
watch haying.

Halix of life
uncoils, to warm
the man.

The butterflies
shiver in sun.
Fine weather.