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On a rainy Friday morning, Caleb encouraged me that we should go to his family’s farm for the weekend for a much-needed getaway.
We packed up the car with the essentials — fly rods, work boots, rain gear, and a few snacks.
Never knowing what a weekend at the farm holds, we prepare for everything - a drive around town, a search for a nearby creek that isn’t dried up yet, and work gear to help with any chores or things needed to help us putz around.
It’s been a getaway spot ever since Caleb took me there while we were dating. The sky seems bigger there with 150 acres to ride around the 4-wheeler on. Sunsets are longer and more colorful, skies are bluer and bigger, and rainfall is a quencher to the hard fields.
The setting sun on Friday night was seen through the blinds of the window facing west and I rushed my bibs back on to get outside to watch. We have a sunset ritual most nights of riding through the back field on the 4-wheeler. Continuing that tradition, our skin turned pink with the color-changing sky.
A single bird watched with us as it perched high on a cable line. Maybe he was taking note of how big the sky was, too.
The Scent of Buttered Air
We were stuck in a vortex all day long,
the sun never moved other than higher.
-
Time stood as still as rock.
Like a wooden pole in the middle of a field holding cables
that waves only when animals rest on them.
The shadows change so slow here.
-
Corn sprouts in small rows that dot the field like a well-kept cemetery.
Something about death on a farm,
it only brings back life from another.
-
After breakfast,
She joined me for coffee since She already sipped Her tea.
-
The grass was still wet with humid dew,
or the last drops of Her tea.
She spent the morning
toasting the air for us once we left the house.
Warm, crispy, even with a little scent of butter
and a few crumbs laid out.
-
Past the time of morning,
the sun, She didn’t seem to move
except to come down to me from being
camped high on a ledge above the clouds,
helping to guide my rest.
Riding through uncut wheat fields under the power lines.
Toasted air warms all skin exposed.
The feeling of drinking warm milk or a creamy soup
in the middle of the field, alone.
Just me, the hidden snakes, and the uncut field.
-
It’s easy to rest while at the farm under the big skies.
I’ve written a handful of poems while down at the farm and they all seem to go hand in hand. Referring back to older ones of the story of the seeds in the field or the hands of a hard-working farmer. This one felt like a sweet sip of hot chocolate or a subtly sweetened honey latter or something. Something very small but one of those comforts that you look back on for days after indulging.
Until next time,
Madeline
Enjoy your poems.
Very nice, Mad’s. I always find your writings very calm and refreshing to the mind.