Hay Ride
Children on hay bales for benches, gripping rails,
rocking with the wagon, squirm their rapture.
Antique tractor sputter eases the anxious quiet.
No prancing horse, no joking driver, no jolly group singing.
Parents lull with contours of earth as if to sleep
while children spy out green tangled humps of orange.
Children will release when the ride is over,
leaping down steps with arms raised high,
running strides that crunch the gravel.
They’ll fill cupped hands with grain for the horse
(whose hayride days are over) and tingle at his whiskered lips,
giggle at his rough tongue, listen when his half-fearing eyes speak.
Parents will linger on the rocks, kick them listlessly
near ignored playthings, stare off at the barn when
conversations bow to the sovereignty of silence.
Silence over the farm, silence over the orchards.
Silence brought from the office in slit searching eyes
where silent is the manager and silent is the phone.
But children will run and laugh all the more for lack of laughter.
Wistful grain will spill over their fingers
trailing to the beast who has no burden,
for in the wagon their restless legs flex the impatience of joy.
