   by Orval Lund  Crawling steady at a slight slant, smooth
waves of sliced and shiny earth spiraling behind, the engine
droning, the floor-hum tickling your feet, the big yellow Moline
fenders defining your cabin, you're much alone on flat fields,
not a tree in sight, seagulls, a punctuation in the sky,
hovering for worms sliced and tossed atop.  At field's end, you
jerk the frayed rope to raise the plow. The shiny, scoured
blades climb out, the tractor takes its little step up to sod,
sighing from its upright pipe, and you turn and steer your right
wheel toward the clean square trough, then jerk the cord to drop
the plow; the tractor grunts, hunkers down, squares its
shoulders, snorts and starts again.  Again, the engine's drone,
the scrape of stone on steel. You can feel your back relax, the
tingle in your feet, can smell dark earth and remember a day you
prepared the field for growth, the rolling sod streaming back
and scouring shares to a shine, the poetry of straight black
lines across a flat field.  fr