Hay for the Horses

I want to share with you today, as I do my 9-5 job, one of my favorite poems ever, “Hay for the Horses,” by Gary Snyder.

Gary Snyder reading Hay for the Horses

Hay for the Horses

by Gary Snyder

He had driven half the night

From far down San Joaquin

Through Mariposa, up the

Dangerous Mountain roads,

And pulled in at eight a.m.

With his big truckload of hay

        behind the barn.

With winch and ropes and hooks

We stacked the bales up clean

To splintery redwood rafters

High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa

Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,

Itch of haydust in the 

        sweaty shirt and shoes.

At lunchtime under Black oak

Out in the hot corral,

—The old mare nosing lunchpails,

Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—

“I’m sixty-eight” he said,

“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.

I thought, that day I started,

I sure would hate to do this all my life.

And dammit, that’s just what

I’ve gone and done.”

Are you a writer who’s been bucking hay for 51 years?

Time to write!

Happy Monday!