For Delbert

We bucked hay bales those hot July days,
125 pounders!
Smelling the hay and dust and tractor fumes,
seeing the old man outworking
my teenage body,
his efficiency of motion earned
from 60 years in fields.

I'm 17 and bone tired by 11:30
we eat a dinner for lunch,
pot roast, new potatoes, freshly
baked bread, milk and pie, then
go out to his barn where he hands
me a lukewarm bottle of Rainier beer,
it's how we drank it in Canada.

He'd go take a nap,
I'd sit in the cool green shade of
the haybarn easing my muscles
until it all began again.
On those summer days I believed
I was a man.

Bob Salsbury/The Unbearable Bobness of Being

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