Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CATERPILLAR '60', by CRANSTON STROUP


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CATERPILLAR '60', by                    
First Line: The sun / is burning clouds up over lame mare hill
Last Line: "the wash: a trifle for tomorrow."
Subject(s): Farm Life; Tractors; Agriculture; Farmers


The sun
Is burning clouds up over Lame Mare Hill
As Rudolph Brown comes strolling from the barn
Rubbing his thighs and slapping on his chest
To start the circulation. "Dean and I
Will take the Fresons and the two roan teams
To lower forty. Guess you'd better take
The tractor up behind Lame Mare. Perhaps
We'd better lay that section fallow now
For next year."

I know that field well; and Brown
For all his money in the local bank,
Must feel the meadow is too lovely rare
Even for pasture. Now the gleaming shard
The coughing Caterpillar will lay low,
And turn and tarnish.

Rudolph grins and goes.
I think he knows I'll hate this sacrilege
Of scorn for beauty. I laugh a little, too,
Half sheepishly that I am such a fool,
Stride over to the toolshed, slam the door.
I grab the gun, and grease the tractor cups,
And prime the cylinders, and swing the crank.
I know a quarter turn is all it needs
To start the sixty horses' snorting breath
As they all paw beneath the hood to be
Away. The tractor roars. And we are off
Complaining down the road dusty with Spring.

Not knowing, you would think the tractor's roar
Would fright the little folk for miles around
Into their burrows. Well, it doesn't though.
A badger waddles leisurely across
The road and, unperturbed, slips out of sight.
A coyote, with a squirrel held in his teeth,
Sedately walks across the trail. The sly
Old thief knows well enough I have no gun.
Jack-rabbits, feigning fright, jump almost down
Between the treads. Vituperative from
A eucalyptus bough a blue-jay screams.
While down inside some soft old live-oak stump
A thrush sings lullabies to four young birds.
The gang-plough bangs and rattles up the road
On rusty, well greased wheels. The tractor snorts
As we surmount the rise.

Below us lies,
Patient, compliant for the sacrifice,
This meadow, pristine, smiling, excellent,
And glowing in the sun just come above
The top of Lame Mare Hill. The golden bowls
The poppies hold aloft are filled with dew;
The lupines all have nectar on their lips;
And over by the hill the mustard flowers
Are full of rainbows. But I drop the ploughs
And set the gears in low for the long, slow pull
Of slope. The ploughs cut deep, the ribbons turn
As sixty horses strain the bar. The flowers
Sink to graves of unmarked beauty. "Well,
Better," I console, "To die in this
Your beauty, exquisite, than sink at last
A tattered memory to the earth that once
You suckled; faded and worn with life."
And so, ten thousand to a furrow, bits
Of sky and tiny fragments of the sun
Are buried under shrouds of quiet earth.

By supper time I'd washed my greasy hands,
And leaned against the gate to watch the sun
Sinking behind the hills. Then to the house.
After grace plump Mrs. Brown heaps high
A plate for Dean and me, and then a plate
For grinning Rudolph too. He turns to me:
"Well, how'd the tractoring go today up there
Behind Lame Mare?" I don't laugh, for I
Remember too much; but I say instead:
"Just twenty acres still are left to plough,
And that small lower lupine field below
The wash: a trifle for tomorrow."





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