Late June.
Friday night. Late night dark, no moon.
Window down, you just know they’re out there
when you turn your truck
by the farm.
The aroma lifts you.
The bales, they lie there.

There is that certain something there,
fresh cut sweetness
in the air.

Bales
when they lie there like ramparts
haphazardly dropped
from a bailer’s tail
twine tied, tight-knotted
those amazing metal fingers
a rocket science wonder.

To see the bailer do its thing
you’d think these fragrant cubes
would lie like dashed-line dashes
in-line cubist art form
perfectly crossing
fields to the horizon.
And, back.

No.
Instead it’s zigzag madness
scattered by the tractor driver
drunk from drinking
the cut-hay aroma
of twine and motor oil.

Blazing July sun
scout-style you watch
the back of your hand
warms hot.

Suddenly, as if coming home to an
all-day
simmering kitchen stew … this tractor
man throttles up,
engages the bailer’s thumpa d’ thum
pada
his standpipe exhaust bellows black
to shake some spice into the brew
that is already the midday sky
a smoke signal telling someone
anyone
everyone walking by
“I am here.”

Here to be seen for miles
across the Great Plains
working, working those Plains. Working hard,
a sweat beading at times under the work shirt
absurdly still buttoned down at noon in July
an exhaust plume Morse Code-signaling to all of heaven
that the Plains are
alive to the horizon.

You pass by
sometimes late at night
dark no moon. The sweet certain something
tells you what you know.
Hay bales, when they lie there
in the steaming soft and misty air.

You know what it smells like
to be alone near the farm.

Morning red sun
dries the mist on hay and the
green that grows after the first cutting.

But wait, it’s October,
a goose reminds.
This cutting the third,
means we’re done.

You drive by
You turn your truck.
There’s an early wisp of winter
The window’s up.

You stop by the loft
to drink an aroma you know and
to find a moment. Just a moment,
to bring the summer back.

                          — Robert Hughes