Raking

Raking

who reads into distances reads

beyond us, our sleeping children…

                                    Seamus Heaney

                                    “Travel”

Bent like carpenter’s squares

The whole field was stripped, unzipped

One rake pull at a time: swish/tip

Swish/tip the whole morning swish/

Tip through and through.

He’d owned the field and set me

To work at the string, row on row

Around and over stones.  I’m as

Bog-caught as moss.  So it’s elbow

At the knee and it looks all the same blue

In the pail until my two handed carry straightened

Me.  That five gallon bucket slumbered

Every ten steps or so and the winnowing

Machine so so far away and wouldn’t my toe

Knock against that stone and almost,

Almost tumble into the rug of small

Sticks and leaves.  But listen:

Recovery is sometimes as modest as shifting

The weight of the load from one shoulder

To the other.  And because my reach was

Short

The bucket dragged and scuffed

The August-hot leaves, yellows and faint

Greens.  It was routine: fill it, pick it up

And walk aways and put it down and do it all

Heading toward the rows of stacked

Wooden boxes factory stamped.

I’d be paid three dollars

A box.  It was hot.  It was a course of tugged

Twine, tin pie plates tink- tinking on their staves

To shock the crows away.  It was crushed

Cans and sweat in my eyes and men mostly going

Up their row slick as butter, going and going.  I’d pass

My father and my sisters with this bucket.  And

We’d talk, me and this spilling pail: Let’s rest

You and me.  Let’s take it here to sit, let’s… and we

Did.   Head through knees I’d see the thirty six

Teeth of the rake still filled

With leaves, with little sticks, some long blonde

Grass  scrape at my ankle.  I’d see the whole

Field from up there, almost a bowl

Filled with the day’s haul of the small sweet blue

World.   Rakers, it’s a short season.  The winnowing

Machine is low on gas.  At last I pick it all

Up and walk all the way without stopping

This time, without one more sway, without one more

Glance at the crows up top cawing at the sun

Going down.  And without saying a word but

My own name to the man who tips my bucket

Into the mouth of that machine. I watch it all:

The berries falling down, like sky in a box.  The heat

Of the belts and swelter, the choke of exhaust

Coughing out the reign of the field with her leaves

All spring, through the bloom, through the browse

Of bees early on, through summer to now

When it all comes down to packing it

All away.  All that chaff.  All that not needed green

Beneath, green that tomorrow will be a memory, and still

All that blue, blue, all that blue ready, bulging

With sweet fruit, oh yes, ready.