The Hay Rake

The Hay Rake


One evening I stopped by the field to watch the hay rake
drawn toward me by two black, tall, ponderous horses
who stepped like conquerors over the fallen oat stalks,
light-shot dust at their heels, long shadows before them.
At the ditch the driver turned back in a wide arc,
the off-horse scrambling, the near-horse pivoting neatly.
The big side-delivery rake came about with a shriek—
its tines were crashing,
the iron-bound tongue groaned aloud—
then, Hup, Diamond! Hup, Duke! and they set off west,
trace-deep in dust, going straight into the low sun.

The clangor grew faint, distance and light consumed them;
a fiery chariot rolled away in a cloud of gold
and faded slowly, brightness dying into brightness.
The groaning iron, the prophesying wheels,
the mighty horses with their necks like storms—
all disappeared; nothing was left but a track
of dust that climbed like smoke up the evening wind.

Kate Barnes

Posted over on The Writer's Almanac
Synchronicity at work here; the photograph was taken
on a farm in 1945. The poem was posted on September
2, 2010, and it was mentioned on the Almanac that on
that day in Tokyo harbor in 1945, on the deck of the
U.S.S. Missouri, the Japanese surrendered.


"The Hay Rake" by Kate Barnes, from Where the Deer Were.