Rooster Summer
Robert Heidbreder
Illustrations by Madeline Kloepper
Groundwood Books
House of Anansi Press
Toronto Berkeley
Text copyright © 2018 by Robert Heidbreder
Published in Canada and the USA in 2018 by Groundwood Books
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press
groundwoodbooks.com
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program
the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and
the Government of Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Heidbreder, Robert, author
Rooster summer / Robert Heidbreder ; illustrated by Madeline Kloepper.
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55498-931-7 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-1-55498-932-4 (HTML).—
ISBN 978-1-77306-137-5 (Kindle)
I. Kloepper, Madeline, illustrator II. Title.
PS8565.E42R66 2018 jC811’.54 C2017-905303-5
C2017-905304-3
Jacket and interior illustrations by Madeline Kloepper
The illustrations were created using inks, gouache, graphite
and digital technique.
Design and jacket design by Michael Solomon
To my grandma and grandpa and all the hard-working farmers of yesterday and today.
RH
For the long summers in the cul-de-sac.
MK
Table of Contents
A Noisy Good Morning
Egg Hunt
The Chicken Coop
Back
The 11:58
Our Watermelon
Barn Play
Barn Cats
Barking the Cows Home
After Suppertime
Mom and Dad
The Storm
The Fox
The Stranger
Spilling the Beans
Corn Talk
Ginger-Tea
Making Amends and Friends
Kittens
The Attic
Treasure
A So-Long Hayride
Good-Morning Goodbyes
A Surprise
School Reports
Seed-Sack
Rexster
Now
A Noisy Good Morning
A cocky morning crowing
and a daybreak braying.
A snappy-tap rapping
and a nose-nudge tapping.
Grandma ups
the window sash,
and in struts Rexster,
up off Seed-Sack’s back,
over his head,
straight across the floor,
fluttering onto beds.
“He’s gonna peck!
He’s gonna peck!”
we both shout as we spring up and out.
But one last rooster-doodle-doo,
and Rexster swooshes through the window,
past Seed-Sack’s swaying,
straw-hatted and still-braying head
and back onto his back.
Our summer days of farming fun
have noisily begun.
Egg Hunt
“Egg hunt! Egg hunt!”
Grandma grins, handing us
straw-softened baskets
for morning eggs.
“Be quick now!
Quick sticks! Quick sticks!”
Rexster greets us in the hen yard
on the slow swaying back
of Seed-Sack.
Then, with a feathered swoop,
he’s up off Seed-Sack’s head, up over ours
and down to the ground.
Gently, we squiggle up onto Seed-Sack,
baskets upended in hand.
Seed-Sack slow-steps
off toward the chicken coop.
We hug-hold tight
for a few steps and … down he sits.
We slide off in a bundle of chuckles.
He turns, brays a big toothy smile,
shakes his old straw hat —
bits drift off like summer snow —
and then stands back up.
Again, again, again
we ride and slide,
slide and ride,
till we tumble down,
smack-front-dab at the chicken-coop door,
upturned egg baskets now hats on heads
and Rexster roo-da-doodling at our sides.
The Chicken Coop
We stoop
into the chicken coop.
This is quick work,
a stinky-hot, feathered fluster-bluster.
Cranky hens flip-fly off their nests,
filling the air with fuss and feather.
Robbers, we scoop and dash
with the biggest and best.
Covered in a flurry of feathers,
like rowdy-night pillow fighters,
we rush out to the fresh, bright morning
and to Rexster and Seed-Sack waiting.
Back
Back up on Seed-Sack’s back,
we soft-shimmy,
patting his hatted head.
Seed-Sack grabs
both eggy baskets in his big teeth,
and off we set, slowly,
back to the farmhouse.
Rexster leads the way,
king of the morning parade.
Without once sitting down,
Seed-Sack delivers us to the kitchen door
and sets the baskets on the porch.
We pat-pat Seed-Sack and carry the baskets
into the kitchen to Grandma.
“My two quick sticks!
You were slow as new calves
at fresh salt licks!
Hmmmm?”
“Seed-Sack. He kept …” we start explaining,
just as Grandpa, home from chores,
comes in, wide grin, and says,
“You can’t tell with a mule.
They follow no rule.”
We giggle, giggle, say it again, again,
over and over, till breakfast finally quiets us down.
The 11:58
A flutter and a flap —
and Rexster’s in the barnyard,
high on Seed-Sack’s hat.
They fast-foot it to the farm gate,
Rexster egging them on,
Faster … faster!
Grandma grabs the wheelbarrow.
We cram in with loud laughter
and thump-bump after.
Grandpa’s already there
with pots, pans,
rough and wild hats
and a wobbly chair.
He has a corncob pipe behind each ear.
Train tracks cut the farm in two,
front and back,
like two shiny silver slivers of a stream.
We hear chug-chugs, choo-choos
getting nearer and nearer.
We stuff our shoes
onto our hands.
Pots, pans, funny hats on heads, we wait there.
Grandma rocks on the wobbly chair,
banging more pots, high in the air.
Rexster sits a-doodling on the topmost fence post,
while Seed-Sack turns his hind-end to the tracks,
wiggle-waggling, his tail swipping
back and forth, back and forth.
Swift as water, the train whips by.
Shoe-handed, pan-and-hat-headed,
we wave, shout and clang out Hi!
Faces stare, fingers point, necks crane.
One man drops his soda pop.
We see his mouth open and eyes bug
in a big OOOOPS!
Then it’s over.
The train heads off to the city,
as we double up in laughter-bright delight.
“City folks on the go
need a barnyard show,”
Grandpa says.
In a rag-tag line
we shuffle back,
singing high and low.
“City folks on the go
need a barnyard show!”
Grandma’s garden grows colors:
strawberry reds, cauliflower whites,
eggplant purples, watermelon greens.
One watermelon is bigger, rounder,
longer than all the others.
We love seeing, feeling this watermelon.
If we’re in the garden,
or just rumbling past,
we sing out:
Grow, melon, grow—
big, sweeter, sweet!
For a treat … to eat, eat, eat.
Yum! Yum!
Sometimes we dance
around it in a ring, chanting,
but sometimes we just pat it,
softly humming,
“Grow, grow, grow.”
“When will it be ripe?”
we often ask. “When?”
And Grandma always riddles us back,
“When summer days grow
low and slow, slow and low.
Then you’ll know.
Then you’ll know.”
So we wait.
Barn Play
We scurry up the ladder to the steep hayloft,
grab the long thick rope
and send ourselves flying —
singly, doubly or triply —
while Rexster claw-grips ahold,
fling-fluttering away.
Sometimes we hurl ourselves
into the spiky pile of hay.
Sometimes we just swing
fast to slow to slower to slowest to stop,
and then we hop-drop
as near to Seed-Sack as we can,
full-body patting him as we land.
He loves to try to pull
our shoes off as we fall.
We loosen them for an easy grab.
When he gets one,
he tosses it wildly or squat-sits on it
for a game of mule hide-and-seek.
We giggle-grin, Seed-Sack barn-brays,
Rexster roo-da-doodle-doos.
Barn Cats
The barn hides cats.
Not too far away,
some invisible cats
softly mew-mew
in work and in play.
“Them cats are workin’ cats.
They catch mice, bugs, rats,”
Grandma and Grandpa warn us.
“Don’t make ’em your pets.”
But we do, or try to.
Most scat-cat away
when they sense us near,
but not the one we call Tuftin,
a spiky-haired, white
and light-brown girl cat.
If we lie very still, silent, calm
and put a few grains in hands,
sometimes, just sometimes,
she will pad near, purr, lick us and cuddle.
We don’t try to pick her up —
we just let her find comfort with us.
We stroke her soft warmth
and drift off in catnaps with her
in the dusty dark of the barn.
Being quiet as mice can also be nice.
Barking the Cows Home
“Arf arf ruffy ruff!”
Grandpa’s barking for us.
We quick-leap from our catnap
and bounce up to him, panting
and barking back,
“Arf arf ruffy ruff!”
His trusted old farm dog, Karmie,
died a few months back,
and he doesn’t have a new dog yet.
“Gotta get the right doggone one,”
he smiles,
“or herding’ll be no doggone fun.”
So for now, we’re the dogs,
two-legged tall,
barking the cows home.
We head off to the open pasture,
Rexster and Seed-Sack at the back.
We stand far and safe behind the cows
and dog them back to the barn.
“Arf arf ruffy ruff!
Arf arf ruffy ruff!”
After Suppertime
Tummies all stuffed,
after-supper chores done,
Grandpa grabs a ragged barn blanket
so we can stargaze and star spot.
We love seeing the Big and Little Dippers
and trying to count the stars.
“One, two … skip a few … ninety-nine … ten zillion …”
Soon we’re tuckered out,
on the edge of sleep.
Grandma and Grandpa cradle us in their arms,
carrying us to beds, softly singing,
“To beds, to beds, our sleepyheads.”
We pj up as Grandma pounds pillows.
We snuggle down in the crinkly sheets
that smell of farm sun, earth and wind.
Rexster’s at the window.
Seed-Sack’s off somewhere,
still daring to bray the day away
and having his say at deepening night.
We drift off,
wrapped in the farm’s musical sway,
and hear far, far away
the 9:53 streaming back from the city,
whistling, choo-chugging away
another farm day.
Mom and Dad
At summer’s start, Mom and Dad
visit us at the farm almost every day.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?”
they ask again and again.
And again and again, we say,
“Yes, yes, we’re okay!
Plus, plus, plus!”
So little by little, bit by bit, they leave us
to our newfound farm life
with Grandma and Grandpa.
But every Sunday, at 5:30 on the dot,
they arrive for supper
and become part of our summer story,
of Rexster, Seed-Sack
and play-away days.
We know they want us to know
that we can also grow
apart from them, in our own ways,
like crops freshly planted
in fertile fields.
&nbs
p; The Storm
Our town friends visit.
It’s a hot, hot day.
Down to the creek
for a bit of cool-water play.
Rexster follows
with flaps, flutters and hops,
roo-da-doodling all the way.
Behind him Seed-Sack softly mule-sways,
laughing out his loud mule brays.
First we wade, then plunge deeper
where the creek runs fuller and wider.
Our clothes get soaked,
so we wiggle them off
and slosh them into a pile.
We giggle at the plop-pop sound
they make as they flop down.
Suddenly sun’s done,
the whole sky deepens with dark,
lightning jags down ragged forks.
Rough thunder sky quakes all around.
We know to run,
flee the trees and water.
“Lightning’s dangerous.
It’s sky fire coming to earth,”
Grandpa and Grandma often warn.
We grab Rexster, hug him tight,
wrapping his wings as we hurtle back.
But the 11:58 is streaming down the track.
Dripping wet, we hip-hop foot to foot,
willing it to pass fast.
Seed-Sack hoot-toots a long song
with the train whistle,
head tossed back like a mule playing dog.
All the train folks stare,
pointing, laughing, covering mouths.
We’re not that funny, we think as the train fades.
We make a dash for the farmhouse.
Grandma and Grandpa
break into long, loving laughter
when they see us.
“Birthday suiters,” they tease.
Quickly we realize we have no clothes on.
They’re still heaped deep at the creek.
We laugh, point too,
just like the train folks do.
Wrapped in towels and sheets,
we wait for the storm to pass,
then dressed in fresh clothes,
we race back to the creek
to finish our play-away day.
The Fox
“Egg hunt! Egg hunt!”
Grandma beams, handing us
the straw-softened baskets.