To The Threshers at Evening

Pioneer Cemetery, South Dakota

A flu, perhaps, or a hard winter--
the trains snowed in past Tracy cut--
left the children buried four a stone.
Their parents lived past them,
breaking sod in a stark country,
huddling markers under this stun
of sky. Those early stones are carved
with spinning wheels and sheaves
as if to say--the Lord has broken us
as once He broke the nets of fishermen:
with abundance. The wheat
too heavy for the scythe,
the pheasants rising up like offerings--
Ah, see where He comes
to the threshers at evening,
to the fields cut, to the straw
in coils, to the men
leaning on their cradles.

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A poem depending too much on the secondary meaning of "cradle," a hand-held implement for cutting and pitching hay.