Cuckoo oats and woodcock hay makes a farmer run away
			- old Cornish proverb

Sugars peak at midsummer then fall as the nights draw in
and for the third year in a row we're entering August
with the hay barn empty but for some bought-in straw
and your motorbike wedged in a corner stall.

We lose patience and cut on a rumour. Rain threatens all day,
the Met Office map sprouting clouds and the odd blue drop
until suddenly summer turns up and the meadows buzz
with a mob of machines, all laying up futures in grass.

The Massey steams out of the shed like a red dragon,
the Bamford baler behind, a triumph of '70s calibration,
part Wallace and Grommit, part Heath Robinson,
the pick up all of a pother, the chute dropping sweet oblongs

gently onto the stubble. This is grace consecrated in metal,
grab arms scraping the ground, the ram shunting wads of hay
onto the needles, knotters, cutters, in precise sequence,
their neat fit the only magic we know or need.