Tractors for a brush

Tractors for a brush

At every turn a masterpiece, a poem’s opening line,

whole verses fully formed,

colour line  and composition

oil or watercolour, applied by genius hand

or not

just how the land evolves.

Peaks and crags and rolling foothills

etched or smoothed, hues of blue that touch the sky

the ancient frame that bounds, here, the hexagon

an edge of France

this land the peasants loving, till and furrow,

tractors for a brush

though sometimes onions one by one, handed in the soil

next year’s promise, olive green, blue-grey

creamy seed heads, beautifully ranged.

November earth bare, basking, all the glorious shades

ochre, orange, russet, dun

and on the wires, vigilant

feathers fluffed

buzzards watch and wait.

Fieldfares scatter, flustered, as I pass

across the sky a line of rooks

perfect

finishing touch.

November 17th 2012, Hounoux. 

On a large poster in the depths of the Aude, 'Les agriculteurs vous offrent ce paysage'. With gratitude to the farmers of the Languedoc.