The Tractor

It stood motionless.
The Deere at the edge of the woods,
as though waiting for something to,
someone to bring the come-along
and finish what we started.

The bushes moved in -- guerilla soldiers, stealthy.
The bush hog lay wounded in the grass.
And standing in that patch of angled sunlight,
the heat ticking off the hours
and days and years of reflection
and rejection,it seemed as though

I heard a sigh. The trees, their reply
showered leaves like trouble
you'd just as soon forget. Birds
burst forth with screams.
Why? Why?

Had the tractor been brought
to clear the brush or had the brush
moved in to claim the tractor?
Who was the warrior here? Who the vanquished?

Insect battalions chant their nightly ululations
and the creepers crawl.
Like a Confederate soldier
who fought someone else's war,
the Deere stands a silent sentinel, slowly bleeding
precious oil into the ground and asks
us to remember, or at least to not forget.

Will man ever make order out of chaos?

Listen to the land. She will tell you.
Beyond the darkening woods, behind the hill,
you can feel it in the ground.
A distant rumble growing closer.
Thunder, hoofbeats -- the coming roar.

August 14, 2006