my skin drinking the cool
of evening breezes
on the front verandah
I absorb myself
in the Saskatchewan Courier’s
front page photograph
of the newly-arrived labourers

from eastern and central Canada
they have ridden the freight trains west
to work the fields - their illusive
ticket to survival
in this Depression

immigrants, mostly
but not all
they’ve started arriving in our province
to collect and heave the hay of our farms
their hopes rising with the fresh piles
they build onto
over horse-drawn wagon wheels

I am impatient for
our share of these hired hands
to arrive at this homestead
I must settle for photographs
showing young men in long-sleeved cotton shirts
striving to master
the fields and machinery
dreaming of steady wages, not fortunes
but the starts of new futures
prize for their pursuit of the harvest
and the western sun, their north star

until the Crash some had only
worked paper and pen, in offices
now their shoulders and arms
sweat to the harvest
some being slight of build
but industrious, others muscular
made strong by years of hard labour
in Europe and England

in pairs and trios they appear
absorbed in their tasks -

load pitch stack
load pitch stack
load pitch stack

after conquering the vastness of
wide-open fields
in the scorching sunlight
stooking the hay
into teepee-shaped windrows
to dry
then collecting and
tossing it onto the wagons
its golden fibres brushing rough
chafing the ankles and wrists
dust particles tickling noses

on full moon nights
they may carry on past sunset

so long I have waited
the eldest unspoken-for daughter
of a host farmer
for our new hands

I will bring lemonade and sandwiches
to those who come to our land
(on their own time will they be
whiskey drinkers? dancers? fiddlers?)
meeting at last some of these strange men
the first of whose faces I struggle to decipher
but they are obscured in the photographs
by their wide straw hats

just as the poverty here
seems to be obscured by promises
of greener pastures than in the east

I imagine they are flushed
from work and climate
but serious and determined

they will have
little energy, I fear
for noticing me
on their way
to becoming more
weathered by the times

01/20/2004

Posted on 01/21/2004
Copyright © 2024 Maureen Glaude