Poem 538

Cycles of life and death tied to the land … this farm has been in our family three generations … my grandfather bought it after the 1938 Esk Valley flood during which he walked across it sinking up to his neck in silt, so he said he knew it was fertile soil … as I write this history has repeated itself and the farm once again lies obliterated under a metre of silt and flood debris …

The Rich Earth

The day before my grandmother died
                                                                             the day
my aunt couldn't get her back in bed
and sent for the ambulance
I went with my uncle and my cousin planting potatoes
on a field wide as summer

I sat up on the chipped red planting machine
trying to keep the hopper full and the eight sections
of the circular feeder at the top
that fired round like a machine gun
my cousin's hands flickered in the sun
conjuring potatoes into the earth
I sat high up on the box like a cowboy

all morning we went round and round
not seeing my sisters when they came and stood on the horizon
waving and shouting
                                           about the ambulance