sweating harvest

indian summer is making hay, air hot with kernels ripe, like God baking bread in a vast oven and the loaves are golden as the leaves falling and the blueness of sky seems a ribbon to tie it all together and we're wrapped around this moment, husband driving truck, father driving combine and me on the peripheral, taking photos of it all even as the grain grovels into metal igloos for winter-long







i lose myself in the beauty of harvest as they sweat.







beads trail lined skin, shirts soak salt and water jugs empty throats. fingers harden fast around steering, dust and dirt making monks out of the quiet farmers, the earth a cathedral in which the combines sing.





i'm living on the outside looking in. i'm a little girl in a white dress, cheeks plastered to the stained glass and i can't find the door.






nor do i seem to want to.







but their faces light like angels

and the choir of the quiet bellows hymns, and the eagles dip and rise like wind playing with the yellow hair of autumn







and i need to want to sweat. to know the making of the moment.

to know the meaning behind the beauty. to feel the chaff give way, to smell and itch from toil






then sink into the sabbath like it's a mattress made for a king







and i wonder: do i peer into my faith, taking photos of the peripheral,
or do i feel the heat, the dust, the soil of walking in Christ's way?







joining ann, thanking heaven's harvester for:

101. a day at the river
102. roasting sausage over fire
103. long walk in woods
104. regina spektor's songs
105. autumn in barefeet
106. son's squeals
107. late-night friend-talks
108. husband holding hand
109. being forced to wait
110. bracelet in mail from her