Walking back to the farm from the depot,
Riley slapped flies with his tail.
Twilight. Crickets scraped
in the green standing hay by the road.
The voice of my grandfather
spoke through a motion of gnats.
I held his hand. I entered
the sway of a horse.
                                At the brown table
I propped books on each other.
All morning in the room my skin
took into itself small discs
of coolness.
Then I walked in the cut hayfield
by the barn, and lay alone
in the valley of noon heat,
in the village of little sounds.
Grasshoppers
tickled my neck and I let them.
I turned into the other world
that lives in the air. Clouds passed
like motes.
                  My grandfather
clanked up the road on his mowing machine,
behind Riley dark with sweat.
I ran to the barn
and carried a bucket of water
to the loose jaws working
in the dark stall. For lunch
I sliced an onion. 
Then we raked hay into mounds
and my grandfather pitched it up
where I tucked it in place on the hayrack.
My skin dried in the sun. Wind
caught me in clover.
The slow ride
back to the barn. I dangled
legs over split-pole rails
while my grandfather talked forever
in a voice that wrapped me around
with love that asked for nothing.
In my room I drank well water
that whitened the sides of a tumbler
and coolness gathered like dark
inside my stomach.
                               This morning
I walked to the shaded bedroom and lean
on the drop-leaf table.
                                   The table hums
a song to itself without sense
and I hear the voice of the heaving
ribs of Riley
and grasshoppers
haying he fields of the air.