Building a Nation

They came to work with bent backs,
as the word went out that John Jacobson
or the Henriksons needed hay hands.

Their fingers were curled from pitchforks
and reins and shovel handles, and they carried
three-tined forks for shocking, pitching,
and spreading loose hay in the mow.

Nobody was paid: it was a trade,
not with each other--a day here, and a day there--
but a trade with an invisible system of justice
and of necessity. Haying is not a single work.

Some brought a team and a wagon,
each as singular as they were same.
One with wide double-racks--front and back--
and some more pole or triangle. The differences
were ascertained, as in last summer,
and the advantages filed secret-away.

The teams were pride and prejudice;
knowledgeable and dangerously spooked.
The old sorrel from summers long was remembered,
and the big gelding came uneasy to strangers.

Years had defined the roles. The loaders
stood tallest, shaping the shocks as they were
pitched by pairs of men accustomed to working
together--one left, one right-handed, as the
loaders fork hinted it should come, flipped
like music to build the wagon high.

What began as a boy riding the front rack,
driving the team down the lane and weaving
left and right to load where hay was needed,
and to the barn again, became an old man,
having conceded pitching shocks to the strong;
an old man, repairing wind-torn shocks,
gathering up the difference between wasted hay
and a winter's measure of necessary hay.

They fit together, neighbors needing to do
together what they could not do alone, fingers curled
around fork handles, in a kind of memorized symphony
of hard work and remembered harmonies.

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