Red soil

The soil lives

My brother and I

Picked potatoes;

Fought for the furrow

Where the field rises

And water clings

To the clay.

I found a field mouse

And lost it;

While the quiet lady

Closer to the ground

Than all of us

Stooped to gather,

Shaking mud

From the clumps

Filling baskets

With woven hoops

And showing the way.

That late September

Chris gathered more

Among the neat rows

Birthing big blues

Pinks, or canners;

I can’t remember.

But the sad

And the no hopers

Thought to punish

The interlopers

Encroaching on

Their perquisites

So blood was spilled.

It’s what passes

for entertainment

In this rural idyll

The rain falls slowly

And the soil still lives.