When Love is Like Knocking the Clay from the Plough

in the silage

and on the hay

in the fragrance of

rolled oats and molasses

and as it is

with the sweet odour

of cut grass and cow flap still green

or the high pong

of hog chop or how

wheat straw smells of mid-summer sunlight

softening the mow

or dust in the bean row

with dirt choking the light

as it dims with the tilth of the day

turning the earth

on the spring tooth and the harrow

or under the giant drum

of the roller 

a rock-rattle watched for leveling 

so the wind-wild soil 

will settle upon the sown seed

all these and a closing in of white

on the bird-limed stone

oat chaff and marrow

and swine spoor

flung at the root and draping the fences

in timothy strings 

dripping the redolent rags of manure

a dark wake

a wide swath

a visceral moment of darkness come shallow

in shades like shadows in trees

that follow the man in the field

first catching blue air

and then falling 

transforming the mutable glebe

with fertile aromas

ammonium rich and . . .

reminding how love is

like knocking the clay from the plough

or what

flies from the tread of the wheel

when the tractor comes home in the dark

whenever I feel 

the heart in the heat of a thigh

next to mine

or a palm warm as a pulse 

on the back of my hand

I am there in the youth 

of first things

made memory deep

as the full boat 

rides deep and so deeper for that 

in the come-to-me cresting of waves 

2020 Angela Consolo Mankiewicz Poetry Award of Los Angeles