Look to the Stardust - Hal Maples, aka Robert MacBride

This piece is dedicated to my father, Halleck R. Maples, who lived the life behind it. As a young man from the Ozarks, he worked the wheat harvest in Kansas when the tools were a scythe and a threshing machine; and he "rode the blinds" with a buddy to New Orleans and back, working his way. He wrote a novel about his experiences, The Boomer Days, and wrote another novel and his own autobiography of his growing up years on a farm in Southwest Missouri, No Dearer Land, while in his eighties. He moved on to what's next in 2000, just before his 95th birthday.
I do miss him.

The Harvest

The wind blows sharply at my back
And cuts through coat and collar;
Across the prairie have I tacked
In search of one more dollar.

I board the train at Lonesome Gap,
Two days from journey's end;
I prop my feet, and doff my cap
As we pull 'round the bend.

From labor hard I now turn home
Four weeks in wheat fields toiling;
It's now to rest, no more to roam
Neath rain, nor sun a-boiling.

So put the coal, boys, put the coal;
And make those wheels turn 'round!
For love and comfort fills my soul;
It's homeward I am bound.

I've worked 'til blisters festered deep
And muscles cramped with pain;
I've cut and threshed, awake, asleep,
Across a sea of grain.

With longing, that will not abate,
For loved ones old and dear,
I feel I'll pass through Heaven's Gate
At last when they are near.

Now get me moving down these tracks!
My heart is bursting sore.
From endless fields now pull me back,
To rest, and stray no more.

So put the coal, boys, put the coal,
And make that whistle scream!
So toward my love this train will roll,
And home - my hearth, my dream.