Hay Rake
No longer of use but the hay rake lasts,
left in the field, posing as ornament.
At home in bed, the farmer rejects
a spoonful of soup from his wife.
The field needs haying; the farm needs hay.
Without the farmer, the rake cannot
do its job, the scoop and letting go of it.
It’s said we possess nothing, but the farmer
knows that nothing must be cared for,
dies wanting to move his rake to the barn.
And that’s as far as desire goes. The field
grows up around the rake. Someone passing
might notice, as he takes a photograph,
how surely the tines rib groundward.
After the Edson Smith Photo Collection Cuyama.
M. L. Brown is the author of Call It Mist, winner of the 2018 Three Mile Harbor Press Book Prize, and Drought, winner of the Claudia Emerson Chapbook award. Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Blackbird, among other journals and anthologies. Also by this poet: “Carpinteria Fordhook Lima Bean“