Needling a hay-stack

I met a man one day
We’d almost finished making hay
I said “You seem to be the lived-in type.”

He said he was.

I said “You’ve been around a little.
Got some road dirt in your spittle.
Tell me what your take is on this life.”

I thought I’d pushed my luck
When he gave the meanest look
If he’d got me with that hay-fork I’d be dead.

But he laid back on a stack
Let the hay take up the slack
He closed his eyes and this is what he said.

“Well first of all you grow
And as the sun climbs high you glow
Then like a row of August corn, you wilt.

And it’s only when you’re mown 
That you you see how time has flown
But I guess you’d say that’s just the way we’re built.”

He spat a bead of dust
Towards the fire in the west
And fixed me with his yellowed wand’ rer’s eye.

So I left him on that stack
And I never once looked back
But I think about him as the years go by.