Member Poem

Farmer
 
 
 
I hear before I see—
His tractor, that is.
Spitting and sputtering,
it buckles over the ground like
a slow, small horse ridden by
a large, heavy man.
New Holland ball cap,
brim arched, covered with filth,
work filth.
Fifty years since new, his Pop’s
McCormick Farmall Cub
stops, marking time.
Inside its hollow:
wheels spin,
belts race,
oil leaks
onto the ground in topaz beads.
His hands as thick as work gloves,
a Masonic ring pressed into flesh
threatens to disappear like
a strand of barbed wire swallowed
by an ancient tree.
More land.
He’s thinking on buying more land.
Calls it land, never property.
Land is soil. Property is something else.
I know the price and I don’t
know if he can afford it.
But he is a farmer—
they disguise themselves well.
 
 
originally published in The Final Lilt of Songs, an anthology of New Jersey poets