Hauling Hay

I had a number of jobs in my life that were physically taxing.  When I first started teaching, I joined my brother-in-law in his hay hauling business to supplement my income during the summer.  The location was in central Texas, and it was hot.  I quit teaching and hay hauling after my first year.  As I sit in south Texas this summer, I try and think of times when I was much hotter, and working much harder.  It makes the heat, humidity, and the occasional doldrums of retirement, very tolerable.  I wrote this poem using my recollections of that hot and sweaty summer long ago.  Perhaps you can relate.

Hauling Hay

I was a teacher

my salary was meager

I spent the summers

hauling hay.

The Texas sun

was searing at dawn

when I rose to see

if my hay truck

would start.

I climbed in the cab.

looked at the ground.

The truck had no floorboard

just blue smoke and sound.

The hay fields were strewn.

Square bales of alfalfa.

Heavy to lift,

tough to inhale.

We stacked them high

on the flatbed behind us.

One hundred and twenty

at twelve cents a bale.

We made for the barn.

A loft with no air flow.

Sweating and stacking

and swatting the wasps.

The scene was repeated

as long as the sun shone.

Then we, and the truck

coughed our way home.

Dennis Price