Tractor Driver
The fields and sky are pale and cold
as the tractor is first a distant roar
then a moving shed venting steam.
The driver sits high on the seat
shut in his glass observation booth.
He enjoys cutting through a snow flurry
seeing the ground frost shift before him
while he shifts his cigar and sips coffee.
The furrows he leaves are mountain chains
as straight as telephone wires.
At home his big dinner is mostly
slabs of pork, mounds of potatoes.
He has a few beers with the wife,
wiggles the babies on his lap.
Later that night he dozes in his chair
as the TV movie starts to slip away,
the men lost on a rolling desert
turning to snow then only a buzz,
the buzz the only sound coming from
the house on the edge of the plowed fields.
Ray Greenblatt has most recently been published in Amethyst Review, Eunoia, Loch Raven, Moonstone, North Dakota Quarterly, and Philadelphia Stories. His forthcoming book of poetry is the final volume four of THIRTEENERS.
