Saving Plowshares.

Next to the odd plots of earth
are plowed columns, scored in rows,
held in jaws of winter grass 
back from the broken furrows.

Were they to give their total yield
this once, their whole weight
up in the stone cutback  
shifting to till soil, the belated

spring wouldn't have lessons left
for when bird chirps make unsteady
cadences down from oak windbreaks, 
the song and drive of body 

to seasons past, where it feels
the brackish pulse and sum of rocks 
heaved onto two-by-four drumheads -
the rusted wheels locked

in step to the sullen earth

by J D Buermann © 1997