Field

 

Stepping foot
on a field that has gone to grass
untilled, unseeded
given back to its past

 

For two centuries or more

men made the field

with oxen, horses and tractors

first pulling stumps and lifting rocks

then turning it’s soil every fall

but they’ve stopped.

 

The family that ruled this land 

has no sons or daughters

to guide the plow

to till and furrow

not even to gather the last planting 

clover, meant to heal the soil

and feed the milk cows now sold off

It will be only a year or two
till the field can no longer be a field
till wild grass lays down roots too dense
and the seeds of quaking aspen
take hold and throw up saplings
too thick for the tiller's blades

If the farmer cared
he could fix the fences
and let cattle pasture there
it's not yet too late
for grazing to cut back the grass
and a hatchet or ax
to take the saplings down

But, the farmer does not care

he’s left the land

for a easier warmer life

than found in this place 

of winter wheat and corn 

knee high by the 4th of July

 

there will be no fence
no ax, no rumbling tractor
he will give no care
to this place that once was a field
and now somehow differs

Now others care
they walk this field on padded feet
they find sustenance not
in planted seed
but in the raw unplanted

shoots of spring 

and the dangling berries
of summer and fall
 

Soon the field will
no longer be
but their's
and not a field at all.

© 2019 David Hermanson. All rights reserved. You may not copy, quote or convey this material for any purpose without the explicit permission of the author.