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Poetry
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Stacking the Hay
By briarcroft
29 June 2008
We cut, rake and bale our own hay crop for our horse farm from our acreage, but need lots of help when it comes time to bring in the hay on the wagons to the barn.  This is a story of that communal effort to "stack the hay".

New Format (Left margin)

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 overhead                
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.


Original Format (Centered)

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.

Reviews
A differing view
Written by bobc (49 comments posted) 28th June 2008
You really brought a nicety to a job that is just hard, hot work to me. And the scratches on my arms, ouch! Blisters from the twine! Oh my, thanks for the memories. 
I think the line "to guarantee sunshine in the barn" explains it all.
Yep, been there
Written by fellpony (1569 comments posted) 29th June 2008
and will be again if this dashed weather will only stop RAINING!  
 
A tip - please left align your verses ... I found I had to cut and paste this into a WP programme to be able to read it. Centred alignment is very difficult for readers! (Academic papers have been written on the relative readability of various alignments and left aligned, unjustified is the easiest because the eys know where the start of the next bit of information is. I include this to convince you, because of your scientific background!) I also found the short lines very jerky and uncomfortable; while this in some ways echoes parts of the activity, it contradicts the underlying serenity and continuity of the whole concept of preserving summer through winter. 
 
As poetry I'd argue that a few words (consumed, to capacity, communion) are either redundant or could be replaced with something more direct.  
 
You catch all the physical aspects and also the underlying seasonal emotions about hay very well. This is the best piece I've read on here all week :) hint

Written by briarcroft (37 comments posted) 29th June 2008
It's a good point you are making, as my original goal was to mimic the stacked bales in the structure of the poem.  
 
I do have it in a version aligned on the left but had convinced myself that it is not making the visual point as well but I hear what you are saying. 
 
Thanks for the tips on the redundant words too. 
 
Emily
concrete visuals vs word content?
Written by fellpony (1569 comments posted) 29th June 2008
I think in a poem of this nature you cannot work so well with the concrete aspect as you can with the words themselves. I agree that hay bales have to be stacked correctly so they don't slide off the trailer en route to the barn, but I think you covered that verbally with the words "Stacking, Basket weave, Interlocking" I would simply move "cut side up" to after "stacking," and you've got it. Centre alignment of the whole for the sake of that one image is wasting all your other words and concepts simply because they can't be read easily.
New Format
Written by briarcroft (37 comments posted) 29th June 2008
I've edited the poem to create a new format on the left margin, above the original centered format. 
 
I'll be interested in feedback about whether that works better for readers. 
 
Emily
Not sure!
Written by Katanga (1129 comments posted) 29th June 2008
I like it either way - particularly the 'concrete' second stanza of the centred version, but I take fellpony's points. 
 
Brings back a somewhat painful personal memory - as a student I was employed for a day to stack hay bales. 
 
It had been raining, and each bail weighed more than me, and I was punily bilt + had hayfever. 
 
I remember thrusting my pitchfork manfully into the first bale, and being unable to lift it an inch off the ground, let alone toss it nonchalantly 8 feet up into the barn as the other better physically equipped sweating lads were doing. 
 
Oh the humiliation! I like merely watching farm work now . . . 
Cheers! Great poem! 
 
John X

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