All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
\nand steer hide over the ash hames, to haul
\nsledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
\nfor the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.<\/p>\n
In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
\ndark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
\nAll summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
\nclacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;<\/p>\n
and after noon\u2019s heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
\ngathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
\nand the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
\nthree loads of hay a day, hanging wide from the hayrack.<\/p>\n
Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
\nof a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sounds of hymns.
\nGeneration on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
\nof the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.<\/p>\n
When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
\none October the man who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
\nled you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
\nand dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,<\/p>\n
and lay the shotgun\u2019s muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
\nand fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
\nshoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
\nwhere by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.<\/p>\n
For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses,
\nroots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
\nyellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
\nfrost heaved your bones in the ground\u2014old toilers, soil makers:<\/p>\n
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.<\/p>\n
-Donald Hall<\/em><\/p>\n\n All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding and steer hide over the ash hames, to haul sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range. In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields, dark manure of Holsteins, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3912"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4067,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3912\/revisions\/4067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}