We rush into the hen yard headlong,
but something’s wrong.
All is quiet, still.
Rexster is perching high atop
the old mulberry tree, his special spot.
He’s quiet too — too quiet,
and Seed-Sack’s sitting,
alert to all around but us,
his long ears a-twitch.
Slowly, carefully, we push
the door of the coop open —
feathers floating, flung all about
like an inside feathery snowstorm.
Cracked eggs litter the floor,
some spots and drops of blood too.
We run to get Grandma,
who just says softly, “Fox.”
Inside the coop, she shows us
where the fox got in.
We get hammers, nails, wood,
and work to make it strong and good.
“Foxes, they gotta eat too, I guess,”
Grandma whispers,
a little sad, we think.
Life in the barnyard can sometimes be hard.
The Stranger
It’s raining tough nails.
We run through the barnyard,
shaking wet hair
like a wild mule’s tail.
Rexster flit-flitters in circles, wings askew.
We flutter-flap, twirl round too,
elbows crooked out wide.
Seed-Sack stands mule-still,
long head tossed back,
full big mouth open,
drinking deep the rain.
We, too, gulp down
the big hard drops
before we dash into the barn’s dark.
We want to make a safe, dry tent house
with bales, poles and the old barn blanket.
We shimmy to the hayloft
up the wriggling-swinging rope,
yank the old blanket from a heap
and …
a strange man leaps up.
He looks wild, scared, shaky.
We try to scream,
but our voices leave us, like in a dream.
“Shhh! Shhhh!” he whispers
in a voice that sounds like barn straw to us.
“Please bring me some food. Please!
I won’t hurt you. I’m just hungry. Please!
Then I’ll go. I promise.”
We look at him, one another,
and both think we can’t say no.
We dart out of the dusty light,
through the barnyard,
where Seed-Sack and Rexster
are still hard at their rain-day play.
When we get to the house,
Grandma’s in the cellar.
So, quickly, without telling her,
we grab some cookies, bread, butter,
leftover cold chicken and milk.
We stash it under our clothes
and dash back to the barn.
The stranger takes the food
and eats like we’ve never seen anyone eat before.
We’re uneasy — don’t want to see more —
so we race back out the barn door,
worried if we’ve done wrong or right,
right or wrong?
“How long will he stay?” we wonder.
“How long?”
And “Do we tell? Do we tell?”
Spilling the Beans
Grandma’s making us a snack.
“You’re quiet,” she says.
“Quiet as a pack
on the back of Seed-Sack.”
We laugh a little,
and then we start to cry.
Grandma takes her hand towel
and wipes our eyes dry.
“Spill the beans,” she whispers.
“Spill them all.”
We tell her through thick tears
about the scared, hungry stranger in the barn
and what we did.
Then we ask again and again,
“Was it wrong? Was it wrong?”
Grandma rings the big brass dinner bell
out the kitchen window to get Grandpa.
When he comes, we tell him our story.
He and Grandma take our hands gently
and lead us quietly, lovingly to the barn.
At the door, we pull back,
but they both press us on, up to the loft.
The sad, hungry man is gone.
He’s left the milk jug and a short note too.
In crumpled, rough letters it says,
“Thank you.”
Under the paper is a piece of rough wood.
It’s whittled to look like a rooster toy.
“Rexster! Rexster!” we clap-chant together.
We shed our fear and bounce in joy.
“No,” Grandpa says.
“You didn’t do wrong. No wrong.
But next time just tell us
to come out and along.
Okay?”
“Okay?” Grandma adds.
“Okay! Okay!” we say,
enfolded in hugs.
Corn Talk
It’s a muggy, still night after the rain,
air thick with lightning bugs.
Rexster flips and dips about wildly,
trying to feast on bug bounty.
“Will his tummy glow?” we ask.
“Will it glow?”
“With a Rexster rooster,
you never know.
You never know,”
says Grandpa with a smile
that’s warm and slow,
just like the night.
Seed-Sack lets the bugs gather in his ears,
then with a fast shudder-shake
and a mule-head shrug
scatters them back to the night air,
a tiny bright hailstorm of bugs.
Grandma and Grandpa wheel us
down to the corn fields.
We each go in a different row,
steady, silent and slow.
“Shhh! Shhh!” we signal,
and then we listen, all, all ears.
“Shhhh! Shush! Shhh! Shush!”
the growing cornstalks answer
as fresh new leaves unfurl, uncurl …
slow … slow
in no rush, no rush at all.
We reach out, touch the leaves, the stalks
and their gentle babylike plant hairs.
We feel them grow along our fingers.
We pretend to grow too,
up on tiptoe, up we go,
unfurl slow, our fingers like leaves.
We stay long into the lightning-bug bright,
until we’re ready for a sleep-tight night.
We snuggle in beds. Whispering corn fills our heads.
Ginger-Tea
Rexster’s huff-puff crowing!
Seed-Sack’s loud bray-blowing!
And we fast-track it out of bed
to stick heads out our window.
There’s a dog below, not a puppy — bigger.
We crash down the stairs in pj’s
and rush onto the lawn.
Early, Grandpa drove out and away
to get a new work dog for the farm.
“It’ll keep that fox at bay!”
says Grandma.
“Can we name it? Can we name it?”
we shout, springing about.
“It’s a she,” says Grandpa.
“Sure, you can name her for me.”
All at once, we both shout out,
“Ginger-Tea.”
Grandma and Grandpa scratch their heads,
wrinkle noses and eyeball us hard.
“That was fast — fast as a train going past!”
they chuckle.
We just shrug, slant-glance at one another
and plead, “Please! Please!”
We don’t say that many a lazy day
we talked about naming a new dog.
And we think they probably don’t guess,
but they probably do.
Ginger-Tea is a perfect name,
since her coat is tawny, spicy-looking
and full, like a lion’s mane.
We play with her
with no thought of breakfast.
We run, jump, hide,
cuddle, twist and turn.
We play away
any way we can think of.
We forget about Rexster and Seed-Sack,
who slowly, separately head off,
away and back.
Making Amends and Friends
Noisily, busily, happily,
we’re playing with Ginger-Tea.
Grandma and Grandpa call us over
and gently say they think
we’re being unfair.
We feel a sudden chill
in the hot summer air.
“Why? Why?” we plead and stare.
They simply point.
We see Seed-Sack and Rexster
at the barnyard gate, left out,
watching us, just watching.
Right away we understand.
We’ve left out and behind our first
animal friends, our loving pals.
We scoop up Ginger-Tea
and carry her to Seed-Sack and Rexster.
They back-step off when we come.
Carefully, we put Rexster on
Ginger-Tea’s back.
Ginger-Tea stands still and then hound-bounds.
Rexster leaps off, then on, then off.
A game of tag-fun has begun.
With careful, slow steps, Seed-Sack nears.
He nudges Ginger-Tea, who springs up
and tries to get his hat.
He’ll have none of that
and circles her, then stops flat.
Another spring up, another miss.
Seed-Sack trumpets his mule blast,
jerkily tosses his hat off himself,
then noses Ginger-Tea in a wet mule kiss.
Friends, all.
Kittens
We explode into the barn
with shouts and roundabouts,
but something, we feel,
is new, strange, changed.
We can read barn sounds like books now.
“Is the hungry stranger man
around about again?”
We tiptoe,
up and down we go,
all ears, only ears, we tiptoe.
Listen, just listen. Shhh!
Slight, light rustling,
scratchy sounds.
We follow them to find
Tuftin and five kittens.
They mew, tumble, stumble,
high-jinks-somersault
one on top of another,
alive with play.
We love their antics.
We watch, watch,
and then we, too, kitten-play,
copycatting the time away.
The Attic
Some cooler days
we do attic play,
where trunks, boxes, corners
are full of come what may.
We love the old clothes,
toss them on any which way
and play, play, play —
school, storybook people,
tough-talking city folk,
fancy-pants rich guys,
hoity-toity dancers at a ball.
This we like best of all.
We crank up the old phonograph
and waltz around to scratchy tunes.
Sometimes Grandma comes in
with an old tin tray,
saying it’s the best silver, and serves us
fizzy drinks in the best glasses,
pretending she’s a real classy lady.
We bow, take the drinks
and sip without dripping a drop.
As we dance round, up, back, up, back,
we hear Seed-Sack below,
low-braying like a tuba in a brass band,
and Ginger-Tea’s soft clarinet-like strand.
When we sneak Rexster inside
(which Grandma doesn’t always like),
he jumps on the record
and rides round and round,
wings fanning in, out, up, down,
his scratchy-scratchy doodle sounds
and rooster dancing
rhythmically matching the voice
and beat of the song.
We warble along,
happy in our pretend,
not wanting it to end.
Treasure
We follow the creek farther down
where it twists in curves around.
Here it is shadier, denser,
the creek a bit fuller, deeper.
Maybe we’re even on another farm.
Up on the creek bank, where it’s steeper,
are small dugouts, cavelike.
“Maybe there’s treasure,” we hope.
“Treasure!”
We bravely poke
heads in a deeper, darker cave to look,
but we can’t see anything,
so we reach in hands,
grasp, grab, grope
and pull out some … BONES!
We drop them with a shriek,
even though they are small, dried.
“The chicken,
the fox’s chicken,”
we shout as we fast-splash up the creek
to tell Grandpa and Grandma our news,
so glad, so glad
that this once, this once,
Rexster didn’t follow us.
A So-Long Hay Ride
It’s a star-bright night,
good for a goodbye ride.
Grandpa hitches Seed-Sack to an old wagon,
soft and prickly with hay.
In we climb with Grandma and Ginger-Tea.
Rexster rides rooster-regal next to Grandpa,
roo-da-doodling like it’s early breaking day.
It’s mule-stop-and-go all the way,
but we don’t care. We throw the hay
all about, burying ourselves,
stuffing it in our clothes
like living scarecrows.
Seed-Sack trundles us past the barn.
We sing-song, “So long … so long,”
and softly mew-mew at the barn cats.
We chug-chug-choo-choo byes
across the railroad tracks
down to the creek,
where we all somersault out
to the night-cool wet of the water.
Grandma pulls
our song-watermelon
out of the wagon.
We cheer, sing its song,
and then all feast —
Rexster, Seed-Sack, Grandma, Grandpa and us —
on the sweet treat,
spitting the dark seeds
into the starry night.
Up into the wagon we scramble.
On past the chicken coop,
a steady mule-step back to the house.
We keep sing-songing,
>
“So long … so long,”
as the night farm sighs
a summer-gone song.
Good-Morning Goodbyes
A cocky Rexster crowing,
a Seed-Sack braying
and a Ginger-Tea barking.
Grandma ups
the window sash.
In flaps Rexster,
behind leaps Ginger-Tea,
while straw-hatted Seed-Sack nods,
neck long-stretched through the open window.
We both shake ourselves awake,
more slowly, more sadly too.
Today is goodbye day —
to the farm,
to our animal pals,
to Grandma and Grandpa,
to summer.
We pat, hug,
snuggle, cuddle, again, again,
knowing how much we’ll miss them all.
A Surprise
Grandpa comes back in with a box
full of small holes.
He’s grinning sky-wide.
Without a word, he hands it to us.
It shakes a bit and stirs.
We open it carefully.
Inside is a bundle of purrs.
It’s one of Tuftin’s kittens from the barn.
It soft-winks at us,
then springs up into our laps.
We laugh away our leftover cry
and hug the kitten tight.
It’s warm, toffee-tuft bright.
“What do you want to name him?” Grandpa asks,
as we both quickly shout out,
“Summer! Summer the Cat!”
Summer tumbles
over in furry, purry fun,
mewing a soft “friends-for-sure yes.”
Mom and Dad come in the takeaway car.
We scramble in to the loud bray-doodle-barks
of Seed-Sack, Rexster and Ginger-Tea.
We wave wild goodbyes
to Grandma and Grandpa,
to our true forever friends all around,
as Summer the Cat,
our new mewing pal,
summer-purrs us back to town.
School Reports
We have to write
about summer for school.
“Nothing bad.
Nothing sad.
All things glad!”
recites Miss Neftell.
We decide to write about
Rexster and Seed-Sack,
one taking one, one the other.
“Stories take away worries!”
Grandma often says.
So we think it’s good
to stretch stories a bite and a bit,
Rooster Summer Page 2