The rural midwestern landscape in winter is rugged and harsh,
Not something you would choose. Perhaps you have seen me
On my tractor, taking hay out to my cows on a bitter December day
As you passed along the county road. And if you have
You would have felt a moment's pity—what a wretched existence—
You would think, the bleakness overwhelming.
Perhaps the sight awakened an ancestral memory—a great-grandfather
Who tilled the soil, who in winter, when the land was brown and white,
As hostile as ever it could be, lowered his head against the wind,
And trudged from barn to pasture gate to grain his horses standing rump to wind;
Or, a great-grandmother, whose blackened iron skillet never cooled,
Who kept peelings in a bucket beneath the sink for the killing hog.
The landscape chills my heart too, as I search out some familiar hint
To mark my view. Deep and sculpted drifts, dunes of snow,
Cover every field until I barely know my own place. Tufts of wintry bluestem
Relieve the otherwise barren plain. I savor this one diversion, am grateful
There was not time to cut it. My vision is narrowed, no sound can penetrate
The wind and tractor's diesel lug. My world is this, and little more.
I see your car as I cut deep tracks through the snow. I see your face
And hear your thoughts. Yet, it is not so cold, not so cold as you think.
I have my thoughts and my destination, my brown-duck and wool.
From the seat I step down to swing wide a gate, my waxed boots
Leaving canyons in the snow. I do not wish I was elsewhere, nor do I dally.
I raise my hand in greeting as you pass, then lower my head against the wind.
Hanque O . . .
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thoughts-from-the-seat-of-a-tractor/
