Poetry
by Don Moss

POETRY: Don Moss’s “Of The Land”

An image of a brown horse against a black background, taken by Image by Rebecca Scholz from Pixabay, representing Don Moss's classic poem, "Of The Land," as appearing on the automachination literary magazine.

Of The Land

…what/are we but hosts
of times, of all
the Sabbath morning shows,
the light that finds it good.

– 1983 Wendell Berry

An afternoon with dust-returned kin, who natter
to those can hear, by the horse drawn
stone pile—how that stout horse worked
for him for a pocket-smoothed lump of sweet.
The man’s reward, his sweat-dark cotton shirt.
Not like him to complain, unless eighteen
hands white draft Club snorted ‘This dang stone’s too
much for me!’ when it was not half the one
he’d just dragged from the field,
his big white jaws still smiling sugar. ‘Dang’s a four-
letter word,’ the old man smiled back a scold–
clearer than humans hiding sense in syllables.

The old man wished he’d brought Club this warm day,
they knew how to enjoy doin’ next-to-nothin’,
long as that nothing didn’t turn into hauling stone.
and no time to graze the green under hoof.
Club’s tall shifting ears caught more than flies
and taught the man what’s worth hearing,
how the birds peck up whatever is over-sown.
He would nicker teachings with tail
punctuation, not loose conversation;
his held turned head saying,
Will get to that, just not yet.
Did you, did you bring me sweets?

But Club’s back by the barn, the man thought;
he doesn’t need this old hypocrite.
Briars’s what brought me here, briars to chop
and… Didn’t I cut, pile and burn
these Hawthorn stickers when they were winter-
brown, their remains a brief stain on fallow ground!
He wondered who fought them
times before, where their ashes rest,
part of the ground or washed away this rainy time of year,
When did their hands grew weak, their strong backs brittle
as dry corn stalk. Brother Thaddeus
thought things like that, out loud, like ‘Whose dust

fertilized the ground that feeds us?’ Probably
why he never left this place for hourly pay–
unlike me, who tried and tried, fiddling a decade
before this land pulled me near
to work it season by season
by season. Thaddeus was born knowin’,
born here to stay; never rode me ’bout it,
not one day, ‘bout goin’ away.
Feel him with me in this worn hoe
My hands still pull, that will outlive me by far,
be found in the barn waitin’
to fill younger, stronger hands.

Thaddeus insisted he be burned to ash
not buried in a box, but scatter-fed
to the fields—family won’t told of that.
He also said dig up the family graves,
free their captives,
haul off their stones of names,
and times, stand them
by the paved road so all passing
will know who’d worked this land,
and still would, if well below the heavens,
we might live much longer. ‘Ain’t god here, too,
and there, even in them briars?’ he’d say.

Club interrupted the old man’s stirrings.
Didn’t hook the wooden gate, the man guessed,
or that horse nudged it loose to join me.
Hooks work for cows, more
than a whole heard of ‘em can figure, the horse knew.
‘Club, let’s look around,’ the man said,
balancing on a stone to mount.
Both hated saddles, bridles, too, helpers for kids
needing more to hold than long thick mane.
‘Back field,’ the old man gestured,
his legs twice squeezing to get them moving
to the distant rising hill to view the waiting acres.

The horse knew the spot
with a single flat-topped stone.
The man would slide off and sit
And Club graze the tall fescue.
They could hear two crows yacking
crow, one talking, one repeating.
Or interrupting? was their fuss of something?
Club’s ears patrolled. The man saw
a dark tail down one side…no, a snake,
a harmless rat snake swollen with a meal
warming in the sun. A month before winter tuck in. ‘Back’,
the man said, ‘Thaddeus wouldn’t trouble a fellow farmhand.’

[Cover image by Rebecca Scholz of Pixabay.]