Hay for My Horses

The poem “Hay for My Horses” by Joy Harjo has a very interesting tone it tells of a man making the long haul with hay and how he had never thought that he would be hauling and stacking hay have over 40 years. The topic of hay it’s self is something I can relate to. Moving bales in the early morning and the smells bring back amazing memories from over the years. Hey is something you would never imagine yourself stacking or want to stack over the years as Harjo says at the end of the poem.

“I'm sixty-eight" he said,

"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.

I thought, that day I started,

I sure would hate to do this all my life.

And dammit, that's just what I've gone and done."

But you cannot help but fall in with the anonymous of it slipping into every part of your close, because it is linked with a part of nature which is so powerful and wonderful, horses. There is something addicting about horses and with it comes a love for the tasks of manual labor. Harjo paints a picture of a life that is simple annoying and yet wonderful. I really liked his description of alfalfa in the air

The overall message I got from the poem is that you don’t always know were life will go or what may draw you in. It is a simple poem that would easily be over looked but it shows detail of a simple life and the nature of a man looking back on his life.