Vox Populi
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Sean Sexton: Planting Aeschynomene Seed
It pours from a muslin sack like sunlight
through a cracked window shade, fifty pounds
to a metal washtub, old as your footsteps.
A musk, carnal to the world rises from
the emptying breath of particles almost
too tiny to see, or believe.
Three handfuls of buttermilk splashed from
a cupped palm upon the grains and my father
is there, again showing how as I watched half
my life on planting days. His arms like ladles
work wetness through, scraping bottom in
steep swipes as if he was cleaning the tub
with seed, raising slurries to mix in the isolate
drys, and work well done—a pearly sheen
coats every hull.
My pocketknife in a dull crackle cuts a packet
of inoculant Rhizobium leguminosarum, sus-
pended in black, mouldery peat is poured
in grabs, shook out on the surface. Churning
hands return, mixing the dark warmth as if
stirring a shadow into the seed, until a spot
touches every speck.
Math he scrawled on a torn scrap of sack—
readily as his name on Friday’s paycheck
—I’ve kept my whole life: the quartered-
mile in feet times the spread, measured with
a stretched cloth tape behind the tractor.
Blades are spinning, seed wasting, the down
and back is divided by 43,560—denominator
of our lives, for the fraction of an acre
covered every round.
We use an elderly scale—softly sprung,
numbers barely legible—to mete out the
pounds of seed, and, remainder weighed
on return, adjust the gate. Five acres you
hoist and dump into the hopper, twenty
more stacked in bags on the tailgate to
treat as the tractor takes flight, flinging
microbes as it goes—and it all seems
possible, given of history, procedure,
machinery, ingredients, and a small
measure of hope.
~~~~
Copyright 2019 Sean Sexton. From May Darkness Restore
Sean Sexton was born and raised on his family’s Treasure Hammock Ranch and divides his time between writing, painting, and managing a 700-acre cow-calf and seed stock operation. He is author of Blood Writing: Poems (Anhinga Press); May Darkness Restore: Poems (Press 53); and Portals: Poems (Press 53).
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If you’ve ever witnessed Sean going out in the early morning to replenish the day’s feed, accompanied by a son with his little girl on his lap, you’ll understand how deeply both his work on the land, and this poem, move me. And for the record, I’ll add that his artistic talent is as extraordinary as his poetic. Bravo..
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Bravo!
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Thank you for this (nearly stupefying) trip across the acres and the times. It has me all spread across the 43,500 mixed in with the buttermilk and noted down with the Math he scrawled on the torn scrap. Numbers are Beings with this level of attention. This is the “Bring out Number Weight and Measure…”.
Thank you so much and Blessings of the Work.
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gre
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I am so honored by your comments and attention to my poems. I feel to be on the fringe of the World at large as a pastoralist and steward of this family land where I’ve spent my life taking care of grass and soil and livestock. I often feel as though all of you know more about this love and pursuit of beautiful language I can’t seem to give up than I ever will and that I’ve been so fortunate to have your favor is a great and encouraging reward.
Thankyou ever so much!
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just had to look it up … https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/plantmaterials/flpmcpgaeamf149.pdf
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Thanks, Heather!
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It’s so good to see a poem so full of the knowledge of work and how work gets done, both what it takes to do it, and how such knowledge is passed down from generation to generation. Laure-Anne gets it just right in terms of the exactness and particularity of the language.
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Yes.
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I love all the detail, richness of the words and the Latinate species names blended with the imagery—the musk carnal, the pearly sheen, the down and back divided by 43, 560—so full of life and living and the precision of work. Wonderful achievement!
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“raising slurries to mix in the isolate
drys,…..A musk, carnal to the world”
Beautiful work; poetically and physically. Dirt life will survive. Microbes are the living flow with an innate Atlas persistence stronger than ours,
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Such a meticulous, lyrical, precise imagery and vocabulary — how *particularly & remarkably exact* those descriptions are, and yet how, unmistakably, this is pure elegiac, elating & singing poetry! Wrought, whole, & mysteriously fascinating. The imagery — singing its own bacterial worlds and language:
“Churning
hands return, mixing the dark warmth as if
stirring a shadow into the seed, until a spot
touches every speck.”!
There’s a poem by Rimbaud entitled “Les Vieux” (“The Elders”) that also has such taut, inner melodies and appetite for precision as well as a very particular, specific vocabulary — I could hear it as I read Sean’s poem.
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Beautifully said, Laure-Anne. Thank you!
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Wow, Sean, what a deep and dazzling poem!
I was transported and poured into this poem “like sunlight/through a cracked window shade”–
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That’s an amazing poem about organic farming (if I got it right – I read it three times). How buttermilk, nitrogen, seeds, and an ‘elderly scale’ and extraordinary poem make. On the farm and on paper.
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does that produce “feed”?
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So clear, the beauty of the language rich. I feel my arm in the mix, the scent of earth. I love his poems.
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So do I, Barbara.
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This is a paean to the intimate, father to son stewardship of the land. A song of the tractor, of early mornings and late nights, of dedication to livestock and greening fields. thank you, Sean, for the power and simplicity of this writing!
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A wonderful poem! Wow.
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Sean is an American original.
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