More on: farming

Everything close enough fades  

in the coming dark; what’s at a distance, 
gone.

God the God of the cement silo, sunset-stained,
and the conveyor
                                         running through the night.

On Plough Monday, a “fool plough” or “white plough” was dragged about the village by young ploughmen covered in ribbons and other gay ornaments; they asked for pennies at every door and, if refused, they ploughed the ground before the cottage. _________________________________________________—Peter Ackroyd At the first breaking of ground we prayed heaven speed the plow,…

1. AUNT MORAVIA SAID that she had swallowed a glass piano. She was my father’s aunt, a stitch of an old woman. She’d come to live with us when I was seven and my brother Robbie fifteen. Mother had been bedfast for a month before the birth of my sister. In the meantime Aunt Moravia saw to…