Meeting The Ploughman Poem by Sally Evans

He has ploughed nine acres and no one notices.
The black field curls round the black wood,
crested by seagulls and a crow.
No snowdrops, nothing but is desolate.
I walk up the strip by the field's edge,
cutting a path across seasons, , days and years,
plough upon olden plough, ear upon ear of wheat.
His striking blade has made me too aware
if desolation, flowering, birth, defeat,
isolate thousands who have walked as I.
He has observed on turning steady time
the nine brooding loquacious acres
alive and dead, or served and beaten-sown,
ocean of fishing-birds, sky of worm,
path of passer-by, clock of the living,
larder of the surviving, He has ploughed
tremendous meagre acres, where my path
treks up and down, faces I did not see,
hoot of the owl in the wood and the land's ghost,
rhyme of the tractor-wheels, burden of hoof,
the foot, the eye, back working, shoulder, yoke,
the tractor seat, fibreglass sides and front
through which h the rain that touches my long hair
and warms the soil's fresh ramps, spits to warn
the ploughman of reverberating grandeur,
slithering fear.
A woman passes by
a hedge all twigs and bramble-skeletons,
and pauses, courteous or exhausted, where the view
breathes to itself and takes flight down the hill.

New Writing Scotland