First Place Winner: Anne Mullins Albert, Faded A lifetime of hayfield turns fallow when Albert forgets to ask the neighbours' help. The heifers miss the twinkle of his injured eye, the fractured tooth, the fidget. The fields roll and roll, as always, the bailer follows the rake follows the mower. We once followed too, the heft of bails in July, and Fern's meals. How strange we must have felt to him, our frivolous degrees and the fever of winter cabin fires. Blow the beaver dam, he showed us how, sheer the ram and take his balls for breakfast. Laughed when we thought too much about it. He wasn't much for talk; still, we knew him by his easy smile, the small hello, the offered hand, the willingness for work to shuffle to a stop, just to stand there. Five words would seal a deal, our labour for his lumber, our homes impossible without him. His the horse that raised the logs, his the wood that planked the floor. He works them still, the mill, the hills, but tales repeat themselves, and memories flee like weather. The Shelley Road is less than fertile now, the visits rare, the daughters grown far from the farm. He fades like straw, furrowed and sodden with rain and the bleach of a few fine days. Back to June/05 Winners Home