The Long Sweetening

The flames burn like low star-fire in the creeping chill of late night or early morning, depends on who you ask. Stirring the cane becomes a dance to the fiddle being played nonstop for hours. The least ones lie dreaming here and there on quilts damp with dew, but if we dance all night we have sweetening for the year. Who cares that we can go to town and trade for all the sugar we will ever need, but none so rich and deep as the stir-off, the making of the pleasure crop into molasses by the light of another year's harvest moon.