Keep Plowing Away

I watched my father plow, when I was a child,

The slow, straight, deliberate lines of a man trapped on the land;

When he turned and drove away I watched and admired him,

As he came near I looked away, toward the distance. 

“Hop up now and bring me the water jug

And check the fertilizer to see what I’ve got left;

Hurry boy, I don’t have all day - Coming Daddy;

It’s gonna rain and I can’t be out here forever.”

His face was burned yet his body held a strength of ancestry,

Of those who came before and struggled for their own;

He worked so that I could leave those rows of dust

To do the things he wanted, but never would.

The tractor turned, he pondered, smiled, hollered to me

“Grandma’s slow but she’s ninety-eight.”;

But he was too young to know the pain and the waste of time,

That he would be out there forever.