After Scything

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

In the heat of day
farmers and farm hands
lift fork loads of clover
in rhythm to the sound of bees
that hum in their ears like the future
of the horse drawn wagon whose dust
echoes the coming of machines. Still

in this summer, 1949, my father is
working the top of the hayrick
his muscle and bone, sweet as the smell
strong as the hone of bee. Caught
in this motion he doesn't feel himself
fall until he sees the ground and the set
aside hay fork sticking out of his thigh.

Then the man who drives the wagon
the one who pulls the fork from his leg
takes his chew of tobacco and slaps it
on the wound, saying this will cure
anything and it does, my father
remembers those days of scything
his youth, like mine, when we were all
certain of cures for everything.