In seats mud-rusted from the years of use
we perched, drawn in the wake of the blue
tractor: its tires, black and deep-cut, tread
like chiseled stones. Between us, steadily,
the transplanting wheel turned and turned
and turned, took our seedlings to the dirt.
They seemed small and limp in our hands;
they held strange pallor. We knew the land,
harsher than a seedbed, was made of hazard.
The sacrosanct sun, we swore, would burn
these roots. The field would yield few leaves.
Still, we gave ourselves fully to the machine.
Nothing will live, we told each other like a song,
and each year, at the harvest, we were wrong.