PLOWING CORN
Allowed, I followed man-made rows
from road to wood, and wood to road,
I weeded seedlings… plants… until
too tall to plow.
He did not teach me how to plan a field,
to make straight rows,
to finish ends.
I learned that on my own.
Squinting to a place far out,
a chosen point–
a post, a barn, the trunk of some odd tree–
I held the tractor to its course.
Hand to hand and back again, I’d gauge,
by tractor tire or tractor hood,
or rows — to give my neck a rest —
from clod to clod I’d right the wheel.
My father sowed many a crooked row;
he thought each straight,
until he saw the yield —
my brothers’ fields, the same.
They have cornfields of their own, you know —
he saw to that —
Tradition. Land. The name.
We all expected that.
Straight rows do not a farmer make.
I dream I’d run the rows all side to side,
zigzagging them, or in one rotation,
circle in, or out. Put in new fence rows.
Perhaps that’s why, allowed,
I followed man-made rows.
( There was a time I could have asked. )
But then, perhaps not.
By Donna Rice
First publisher, Pudding House Publications
Second, Art-to-Art Palette Journal/Vol 19, No 1, 2007