Gary Snyder – March 6th, Fun with Chairs

After a trip to Durango, where I saw men in a diner who looked like they bucked hay all their lives.

HAY FOR THE HORSES

He had driven half the night

From far down San Joaquin

Through Mariposa, up the

Dangerous mountain roads,

And pulled in at eight a.m.

With his big truckload of hay

behind the barn.

With winch and ropes and hooks

We stacked the bales up clean r

To splintery redwood rafters

High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa

Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,

Itch of hay dust in the

sweaty shirt and shoes.

At lunchtime under Black oak

Out in the hot corral,

—The old mare nosing lunch pails,

Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—

"I'm sixty-eight," he said,

“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen

I thought, that day I started,

Insure would hate to do this all my life

And I dammit, that's just

what I’ve gone and done."