Morning Wake-up Call on the Farm

“Dwight      time to get up”

Five forty-five comes early

When cows must be milked

Just five more minutes…

Cowbells tinkle down the lane

Must get to the barn

Cows find their own stall

We hug their necks to chain them

Now it’s milking time

Milkers pump     milk flows

Pipeline to bulk storage tank

White gold for farmers

Twenty-six cows fed

and milked      time for our breakfast

Fried eggs      (fried) cornmeal mush

Same routine each day

Morning and evening chores done

Sleep comes easily

***

Painting: Dwight L. Roth

Today at d’Verse, Frank Tassone asked us to write a poem using haiku in sequence.  I decided to do a snippet of farm life. When I turned thirteen, it started working summers on my Uncle Fred’s farm in central Pennsylvania.  He had a dairy farm with around 26 cows that had to be milked morning and evening every day,  three hundred and sixty five days a year!  Morning always came too soon for me. My Aunt Dorothy would call up the stair steps and tell me it was time to get up. This is my poem about getting up and getting to the barn each morning.  Some of my best memories come from working there.

Join us at: https://dversepoets.com

 

What’s Missing

Decided to bake some breakfast sweet bread
To eat when I finally crawl out of bed
Goes so good with coffee and cereal
Getting my day off to a start that’s real

Got out the dough…ingredients and all
The dough had risen // standing very tall
I split it open with knife and fingers
Filled it with nuts, butter, and cinnamon

I added some raisons // then pinched it shut
Greased the baking pan and cleaned up the nuts
Baked in the oven at 375
It looked so good as bread began to rise

Took it out of the oven just in time
I cut it open and it looked so fine
But when I tasted // something was missing
An ingredient lost in the mixing

Next morning at breakfast with jelly spread
Along with my coffee // ate the perfect bread
Something good had changed // nothing was missing
Can you guess what I forgot to put in?

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

Amaya at d’Verse asked us to write a poem that involved a secret ingredient. With all the cooking and baking done over the holidays, many people have special thing s they make that are unique to them. The add that special something that makes it work.  In my poem I am doing the reverse. The question is what did I leave out that I should have put in?

Join us at: https://dversepoets.com