Lullaby of Empty Fields
It is August and they have baled the hay, the way it should be done.
Beneath the orange sun golden sugar-cubes of straw are strewn
across the long mowed fields. Men in wide-brimmed hats and boys
in baseball caps come to stack them up, one by one, onto the back
of trucks and store them away from harm in barns for winter feed,
the way it must be done. A silver slip of sunlight escapes at dusk
beneath the dark drawn shade of night illuminating the outstretched
ballet of trees and we can see the flat pastures glittering with florescent
fireflies, the steady symphony of insects to keep them company. The
smell of good earth and memory of sweet cut hay invades our universe.
We dream of the flatness of the world without swaying fields, dream
of the insurance fermenting hay stacked away in silos waiting for winter
days when snow accumulates and August seems so far away. The lullaby
of empty fields plays in our dreams, the way it should be sung.
Jack Conway's s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Columbia Review, Yankee, The Potomac and The Norton Anthology of Light Verse among others. He is the author of, My Picnic With Lolita and Other Poems published by North Country Press in 2004. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth and Bristol Community College in Fall River.