Review: A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich »

Poem: “The Baler” by Hayden Carruth

July 10, 2012 by leavesandpages

The Baler

You tourist composed upon that fence
to watch the quaint farmer at his quaint task
come closer, bring your camera here 
or fasten your telescopic lens 
if you're too indolent; all I ask 
is that when you go home you take 
a close-up among your color slides 
of vacationland, to show we pay the price 
for hay, this actual panic: no politic fear 
but tumbling wild waves down the windrows, tides 
of crickets, grasshoppers, meadow mice, 
and half-feathered sparrows, whipped by a bleeding snake.