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