Summer Comes to Northern Wisconsin

Finally.

After a June that produced impromptu lakes,
soaked us to the point of rot,
the sun reigns for days.

Farmers get busy,
mow, rake overripe fields.
John Deere equipment
rumbles past our house.
My guess is it's shared
like threshing machines
in the past.
If the weather holds,
crews will bale by headlights,
leaving shorn fields dotted with spools of hay,
feed for cattle as far away as Montana.

On my family’s farm
shirtless men spent July
stacking rectangular bales
on hay wagons until they could
barely pitch them up on top.
So hot no amount of lemonade
could take away exhaustion.
Summer in the country means work.
No lake cabins to visit,
no ice cream shops or tourist traps.
Just long days,
short nights full of aches.

Rescue

Months of recovery
loom over me,
an autumn of inactivity
while the garden rebels,
out of control.

Knees I’m forbidden to bend,
weeds I can’t reach,
everything too high,
too low to the ground,
too hard to pull out.

I limp around the yard,
walk under aging lilacs.
The sight of an empty
hummingbird’s nest
saves me.

Jan Chronister is a retired educator who has published three full-length poetry collections and nine chapbooks. She is working on the tenth. Jan served as president of WFOP for six years.