In 1984, the farm crisis starved us.
The pail was heavy, and milk sloshed over the rim
feeding the stream we sent paper boats down
in the early morning. When I held my hand out
to Mr. Dale for a week of work,
he drew a cross above my eyes and sent me through
the Newark Valley fields. Fields where mothers raised their boys
to be dairy farmers, where the telephone lines don’t reach
through the woods, where the cows played chess
and wrote novels, tapping their hooves on typewriters
in hopes of making it in the big city. A steer would stare,
playing his banjo of desire while I carried heirlooms
in the belly of my shirt and spat watermelon seeds.
Last year, I drove up Pultz Hill to see the old farm. The barn was leaning,
mouth agape, confusing falling stars for rain. And, Mr. Lynsay told me Mr. Dale
had swallowed his rifle. 1,600 New York State dairy farms gone in ten years.
Farmland protection grants, Silk Milk, all those almonds that eat the water
they never reuse. When I was a baby, Mr. Dale held me
in the crook of his arm & nursed a calf with his left hand whispering to her
how the world was full of honeysuckle that shares the secrets of grass
and children’s laughter. The bacon on the griddle popped and squeezed.
My mother worked the night shift at the jail. The day we left town,
we went to see The Tempest. I had fished and fetched wood.
When a Cayugan or a dairyman dies, his land goes back to its people, the county,
the poor. The Newark Valley fields that held the prophets are overgrown,
just bluebells and hay, no more ringing, no more sounding of hooves.
Ask who’s got milk? A new farm crisis, broken country land,
and in the big city, we ride a pale horse.
N.D. Erwin is a rural poet, educator, and researcher at American University. He is an editor for Folio and Barrelhouse Magazine. His poetry has appeared in a number of publications, including Redactions, Wordgatherings, Breadcrumbs, and Sonic Boom His book Hemp and Farm Justice is forthcoming Fall 2020.