…My body long since numb from the old John Deere beneath me, the baler hums and thumps behind leaving its squares in a neat row. The sun inches its way toward the tree line and an afternoon breeze has picked up, it carries the sweet smell of cut hay intermingled with the murmurs of the crew tossing bales in the lower fields. My dusty cap wipes a trail across my brow as I watch the dance of maples along the rock wall their broad leaves turning silver backs to me, a forecast of things to come. The dragon flies flit  in and out, teasing, knowing an afternoon storm is coming as time races away… but these are the good days, the days of sun and sweat, hard work and gentle nights, the days before the dark time, before it all went away, before a creeping evil turned all the world grey and stole the magic of the farm…

Authors Note:  I have fond memories of the long days of late summer baling hay on my mother’s horse farm in NE Pennsylvania. She was diagnosed with cancer the winter of my 24th year and passed in the early days of August that next summer – that was many, many years ago, but I can’t pass a freshly baled field without remembering those days on the farm and how much I still miss her…