|
A
Farmer's Son, Age 11,
Plows 6 Acres
4
p.m.
Blunt as horse's breath,
heat, boiler room hot
laced with diesel smoke,
wraps off the tractor's engine
and hones the child
from his face. Dust,
settled onto his bare back,
is squeezed into his shoulders
by a fat-bellied sun. Tasteless
now, the water warm, his jug
half empty, everything
is against him; rain clouds
are nowhere. The land evolves
into a battlefield, the plow
a dictator. Each shrunken
round becomes larger
than the last; each minute
is an hour. Red-tail hawks, kites
suspended in the wind, rotate
across a prairie-sized sky.
Introduced to endless,
the farmer's son is angry,
sacrificed by his father,
taken by the land.
►
More Summer Themed Poems
►
Harvest Themed Poems |
