Needle In a Haystack
The sun barbequed the skin, raising a tenderized pink glow
to the cheeks of the children in the ramshackle red barn.
The three story hay loft partly empty was bristling with tikes.
Pincushioned with straw, sharp as needles,
in their hair, tee-shirts and socks
an “itch-o-rama” of gross magnitude.
Hoarse screams of “Geronimo!”
propel a girl child out ward over the abyss;
letting go directly over the haystack on the first floor.
Barn boards groan under the weight of her flailing form.
Sweet, so sticky sweet, was the air with sweat, hayseed, and manure.
Red welts form on errant scratches rising up on the her skinny arms.
The boy plops from the thick dangling rope inches from her.
“Hi-Ho Silver!” he hollers; kissing her cheek with a big wet raspberry,
running deer-like from the barn doors toward the pastures awaiting bossy.
Up the stone tossed rock wall he clambers at ankle breaking pace.
Leaping from stone wall to the cow’s back;
“Come on, chicken!” he yells.
The girl follows more timidly watching out for
the broken, blue-bottle, glass shards
that poke out from between the fieldstones.
Reaching cow side, she blows brown hair from her face.
Hands on her tiny hips, she eyes the cow and rider.
The cow evil eye stares at her from one side of its huge head.
He slaps the cows rump. Sneakers wail into cowside
and with an indignant bellow of disgust rider and cow are off, girless,
toward the saltlick, leaving the kiss
and the red barn, but a memory.
Copyright © Debbie Guzzi | Year Posted 2009
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