Fields in Mid-August

I sit clattering here on a chattering old cutter bar--a giant sewing machine recklessly unraveling all summer's careful stiches--wintergreen, goldenrod, spiky juniper, wild blueberries, spare stems of hay, young pine, the stray anthill.

Here are no hydraulics, only the wheels to work the pitman rod back and forth, pulled triumphantly by Toyota and wickedly content to buck me off upon encountering a rock, keen blades clicking until they jiggle off their own bolts and destroy themselves in their own efficiency, cutting cleanly the metal, years old, still working, but now in need of adjustment

Further up the knoll Grandpa pulls a modern bushhog behind his farmall tractor. It doesn't carve as clearly as what he commonly used, in years past--the cutter bar-- but it is good that we have backup and Grampa himself admits it works, well--but rather complicated--looking wrong in its orangeness. But that's changing too, like the cabin needing paint and de-mousing, and a lift to its tired joints, and help remembering the glory of its first tidy seams.

In a few hours we take our scythes and clearing saws and bushhogs and tractors and damaged cutter bars and return them to their places one last time--it is time to go, all to Michigan in a few days. School calls and for some, a new way of life after 39 years in New England. And then again, fall is coming and we must leave Summer to busily restitch the patchwork that she loves, knowing too that frost will overtake her before she finishes. But that can be beautiful too.