Two Poems – Gary Weatherby

Haying It

We looked at the day ahead
the mown field
twine bundled hay
drying in wait

shirts off tied
to the stake rack
jumping on
in the tractor’s smoke

slowly between rows
walking behind the wagon
throwing on bales
to be stacked

smelling sweet grass
mixing with dusty sweat
on back and chest
the burn of muscle and sun.

Fog Harbor

How shadows hug the shore
when the wind
raven of the sea
dives black

mooring lines coil
neatly on the quay
the mist for now hides
ebbing tides

dolphin’s soundings
greet the flow to
the ineluctable question
at anchor or aweigh

answered by a word
in the unknowing
where steel gray
meets opaque blue.

Gary Weatherby is retired from teaching and NYS Courts,  he lives in Homer, NY, and his second home is Dingle, County Kerry. Gary has a BA Hobart College, General Theological Seminary, ABD from Syracuse University. The first people to encourage him to write were poet James Crenner and artist George Dugan. Gary was lucky enough to live on the Lower East Side, in the late 60s early 70s where poets gathered at the White Horse Tavern,  McSorleys Old Ale House, and St Mark’s Place. He moved back upstate to teach.