Summer's End

Long summer days.

The world is golden

And it teeters on the verge

Of sweet crispness.

Dust flies in a wild child's eyes,

Sharp specks of straw

Like shrapnel, are airborne

As blades cut and shred

In a whirligig of motorised cutting.

It is a frenzy.

Men, machines, heat.

The sweet heavy oil scent

Of tractors pulling trailers

From dawn til dusk

Through twilight 'til night

And the smell of men hard at work,

Salty and earthy.

The air buzzes so vibrantly

You can see it trembling.

This field is transformed:

It swayed before today,

An audience

With bright, full heads.

The ripeness of their tops was fleshy,

Full.

The machines hum merrily,

Drowning the death screeches

Of golden straws.

And now, they have been floored,

Boxed,

Stacked,

Bound.

Their formality is pleasing

Like small Aztec ruins or tombs

That litter the landscape

And glow under the sun.

We race around them

My brother and I,

While they stand

Before they are clutched away

By a steel hand with sharp curving fingers.

We look for crevices to crawl into

Laughing

As the stalks scratch

And the dust pesters.

I dance on the flat bed of the trailer

Under the rays that make the days

Keep on and on,

Making everything either glow

Or turn brown.

My father and my grandfather

Encroach on my stage

And my performance space diminishes

As bales stack

Like a giant Tetris game

And the shaven field gradually widens

As its crop is stolen away.

It will grow back

But as we drive away

Sat atop its bounty,

I can't help but feel sad

At its baldness

And how it's been stripped.

Its bareness hurts me

Because it heralds summer's end

And the dwindling days

That once held

Endless freedom and light.