Email Poem

Your IP Address: 3.148.109.137

Your Email Address:

To Email Address:

Subject

Personal Note:

Poem Title:

Poem

I wait for the heat
of the Allis Chalmers crawler’s engine
to fill the tarped in space
where I sit huddled
next to levers, gauges and knobs.
The crawler seems to float.
The tule fog obscures the ground
covers everything,
all that has grown
and all that was lost.
Even the old, worn stone headstones
behind the main farmhand’s house.
But I am not thinking of that.
I need to rip the southeast field.
I put it in gear and pull the clutch
and then the throttle and black smoke
belches briefly.
I step on the track brakes
gently left, then right
to get to the headland
and then yank the left track clutch to spin
into place.
The crawler moves ahead
and I push the hydraulics
to drop the pointed shanks into the ground.
I stand now, warm
and look behind
at the boiling brown soil,
shiny, curls releasing and spilling up.
I feel the exact right tug 
of the crawler’s weight
as it lumbers and strains.
I work on making 
perfect, straight lines of turned up soil
across the field. 

Mid-morning,
the tule fog has vanished.
I had not noticed it go.
It will return tomorrow
the farmer has told me,
blanketing everything again,
thickly, 
covering all
while I pass over,
turning and raising.

CAPTCHA Preview

Type the characters you see in the picture

Required