Jennifer Frost Writes

by Jennifer Frost

Along a gravel road, there lay a farm,

A range of ground owned by my relatives.

Their kitchen overlooked the bottom field

Where hay grew silver-green around the barn

And horses stood in stalls by cows whose milk

Was sold. A diesel tractor pulled the plough

That tilled three hundred acres. Mud-caked plough

Blades turned a quarter acre for a farm

Wife’s garden. Aunt Jan’s best cow, Bossie’s, milk

Was clover sweet. Most of my relatives

Gave up their cows when feed to fill the barn

Cost more than they were worth. That’s when a field

Of beans brought pennies per bushel. A field,

With root rot slashed the acreage under plough.

Worse, worthless crops were molding in the barn.

It’s easy to lose money on a farm.

Some seasons, only loans from relatives

Could cover gaps not filled by selling milk.

In winter, driven snow as white as milk

Lay three feet deep where summer’s soybean field

Became a sled run. Merry relatives

Forestalled their fears for next year’s yield. The plough

Would last another season but the farm

Would need to profit to repair the barn

Roof leaks before spring snowmelt soaked the barn

Owls’ rafter nests. Brown rats befouled the milk

Without the birds to dine on them. To farm

A family place meant ragged nails and field

Dirt in your eyes. At twelve, they learned to plough

And rode horses to visit relatives.

I wasn’t close to my farm relatives,

In my time, they used steel to build a barn

Where at the back they kept an antique plough.

They hated town where supermarket milk

And eggs were old. They craved an open field

Where skies, cathedral-high, above the farm

Are splashed across with clouds like drops of milk

And ripe-gold hay ripples across the field

As red-leafed maples ornament the farm.

Wisconsin appeared first in The Chained Muse.