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Plowing

Plain plowing cultivates delight
Of partnership with animals:
Two horses and a man unite
To draw behind them crows and gulls
Feeding on worms in furrows found
As a plowshare tears and turns the ground.

Creation of earthy crevices
From which to live with self-respect
Depends upon the cleverest
Uses of tillage to good effect.
Little enough is earned from land
But spirits that rainy days withstand.

Rhythmic engagement of strength sets grooves
In featureless fields to be festooned
With growth where slow and steady moves
The plow skilled horses pull, attuned
By nature to measure through a scheme
Relying on a well-trained team.

At war with stones that sprout again,
Wise horses know to halt their course
Before the metal strikes in vain
Hard obstacles with hearty force,
And breaks what cannot be repaired,
Ravaging agriculture shared.

Oh, what a universe are we,
Man, land and animals and weather,
Small realistic husbandry
Provisioning a realm together,
While disregarding scant attractions
Of superficial interactions.

Prime sheaves at harvest time collected
Pay tribute to Triptolemus,
And turn employment self-directed
By needy virtue venturous
To seek first fruits of those who sleep
As we plow and sow and weed and reap,

Farming as if to live forever,
Living as if to die tomorrow.

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Triptolemus: in Greek myth, the human founder of agriculture who became a demigod and one of the judges in the underworld

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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34 Responses

  1. Paul A. Freeman

    The initial stanza is a magnificent hook. Filled with various animals and a general description of ploughing, it’s almost a poem in itself.

    Your poem has a medieval vibe to it, Margaret, and the imagery puts me right there at the scene, guiding the horses or oxen (just like the picture Evans’ used, a type of picture we’re all so nostalgically familiar with).

    My favourite stanza is the ‘war with stones’ stanza. It brought to mind a heartbreaking scene from the film ‘Warhorse’ – you’ll need a box of tissues if you watch that film.

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Glad to present a good summary stanza at first, Paul. The poem may seem medieval, but it’s based on recollections of an American in the 1950s, right before farmers were forced into tractors, because repairs and re-adjustments to old plows were no longer available. To him, it was a world irreparably lost. Horses or oxen were indispensable companions and co-workers. I’ve seen the fields one of my grandfathers plowed, but before writing this, never thought of how it happened.

      Reply
  2. Paul Erlandson

    Great work, Margaret!

    You had me at “tears and turns the ground” in the first stanza.

    Many other such simple, but earthy and eloquent phrases are to be found later in the poem.

    Well done!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      I’m happy the wording pleased you, Paul. “Earthy and eloquent” is great praise! I was surprised to learn about “no-till farming” that does not “tear and turn the ground,” but leaves crop residue on the surface with no disturbance of the soil. May be healthy in some areas, but would not appeal to birds.

      Reply
  3. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Margaret, as one who lived on a farm and watched my father plow the ground first before discing and then planting, this poem touched my soul. The birds that often came in flocks to the field were not gulls, since we lived at the time in the upper Midwest, but they came in droves to forage in the fresh fields. I may be among the last, besides the Amish, who witnessed his grandfather using a team of horses like you mentioned in the poem. My father did manage to purchase a used Case tractor to do the job at our place. Your poem is a perfect piece of Americana for me written in wonderful detail as it is a descriptor of centuries of farming.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you so much, Roy. I’m glad the Amish are still with us as a living picture of many centuries of farming. In my youth, I experienced farming as Florida fruit growing, a different kind of care for the earth, that requires a huge investment of time and tending to come into significant production. It was like what the ancients did for wine and oil. Floridians did do some tractor plowing for corn. But when the vision of the universe becomes “man, land, machinery, and weather,” without the animals, it tends to alter man in body and in soul. I was touched in turn by your saying this poem touched your soul.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Kevin. If a farmer has philosophy in him (and I imagine most do) this kind of vision emerges. Glad you mention the classic kind of poetry arising with the crops of a plowed field.

      Reply
  5. jd

    I have just finished a couple of memoirs by people who grew up on farms so this poem is a lovely addition. Thank you, Margaret. It’s beautifully rendered as always. Love the “scant attractions/Of superficial interactions”.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, jd. “Superficial interactions” came from the man whose farming memoir inspired me. He rented a small farm for a couple of years to spend part of his time away from those empty interactions in a prestigious university professorship. Farming, by contrast, does tend to be all-absorbing, as I’m sure you find in the memoirs you are reading or writing or editing.

      Reply
  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    Plowing the earth is an important (and pivotal) cultural marker. It separates those who do it from savages and hunter-gatherers who don’t, and represents a major step in civilizational growth. In fact, you cannot have civilization without agriculture. Cities only exist when there is a secure and regular source of food from cultivated land.

    I am reminded of something I read many years ago about the American West in the 19th century. Government agents were trying to convince nomadic and horse-riding Indian tribes to settle down and become farmers. When one Indian was urged to plow the land, he replied “The earth is my Great Mother. If I cut her face with this large knife, she will not take me back into herself when I have died.”

    I felt a deep sense of respect for this proud Indian, and for his devout reverence for the earth. But I also realized that great civilizations arise only when people overcome their fear and plow the land, chop down the trees, clear the underbrush, quarry stone, and bake clay bricks for permanent dwellings. Savages in jungles and forests, hunter-gatherers, and nomads will never take those crucial steps, because of a superstitious dread.

    Ancient poetry speaks of plowing as a quasi-religious act, done with the requested aid of the gods, who are also implored to provide adequate sunshine and rain for the crops. Margaret’s poem captures this same mindset of agriculture as a kind of prayer.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Joe, for the important reflection on agriculture and civilization. It has very much to do with the plow. The alternatives are cultivating land with the hoe or other hand tools, but this is much less efficient. Or flooding fields to soften the earth, as rice planting cultures do, but this requires terracing and walls and conduits, plus a means of control for streams or monsoon rains. In other words, massive organization. With regard to the prayerful nature of agriculture, I’m reminded that much of Europe was put under the plow by monks. They not only preserved ancient learning, but restored and spread Roman agriculture after the barbarian invasions. With Saint Boniface as the prime example, they were not afraid to cut down trees sacred to the pagans, and when they moved into forest or heath lands, farming culture followed.

      In this poem, I’m working from a memoir of the early 1950s. The writer, a University of Chicago professor turned part-time farmer, lamented the fact that plowing with horses was rapidly declining as farmers were economically forced to buy mechanized tractors. They could earn “little enough with land,” and tractors cost ten times as much as a pair of horses. He foresaw the loss of spirit in farmers forever in debt, and less directly related to the land. Family farming hasn’t vanished, but we have to face the fact that we are now fed by mechanized agribusiness, regulated by government policy and price controls. The “agriculture shared” by man and his animals in my poem is, however, a sturdy ideal to look back to–and one still carried out (albeit with tractors) by a few of our countrymen.

      Reply
  7. Brian A. Yapko

    This is a wonderful, bucolic poem with spiritual overtones, Margaret, which captured me on the first verse where you discuss the birds searching for worms in the wake of the plow. On a recent roadtrip to St. Augustine I traveled along multiple rural roads and saw this exact phenomenon – the farmer driving a (mechanical) plow across his field and immediately upon plowing having the field inundated with egrets searching for worms.

    The balance of the poem ostensibly discusses the benefits of this simple, ancient action for the farmer who lives with self-respect as a result of his venerable toils, and offers details about the process itself. It’s quite remarkable how effectively you create a poem from so homely a topic. But is that really what your poem is about? It is clear that you bring these simple, timeless actions into the realm of the spiritual as you discuss the bringing of the sheaves. Triptolemus is brought in to underline your emphasis on the ancientness of the farmer’s works and his dependence on a higher realm for success. But your word-choices other than this single reference invoke for me several biblical references which enrich (but do not appear to supersede) your invocation of the pagan demigod : “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” from Psalm 126. Perhaps more on point are passages in First Corinthians in which Paul very explicitly uses agricultural imagery – sowing and reaping – as resulting in both material and spiritual rewards. But as I read further, your work is not a vague relation of general spiritual growth. Your reference to “first fruits” is a very specific Christic reference which also goes back to Corinthians: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Now when we return to a line like “Oh, what a universe we are…” it is clear that you mean far more than the little plot of land upon which man, beast and weather all work together. This, the biblical references and the Greek demigod reference offer us much to ponder.

    The last two unrhymed lines are a striking choice after the rigorous regularity of the six previous stanzas. To end without rhyme but with uncertainty seems very appropriate for the subject and the many uncertainties that come with the life of a farmer. But also read with the Christic influence, we can see that you are indeed talking about life itself – a life properly lived as if to die tomorrow. And your absence of rhyme underlines how very earnestly you mean it.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, thank you for this beautiful comment. The poem really is about plowing and the skillful, sturdy, healthy life it offers–integrally connected to all creation under man’s stewardship. But you are right as well to say that this kind of life necessarily has spiritual overtones. You bring up a wonderful reference in Psalm 126 [125 in Douay or Vulgate]. That psalm is about the certainty a man of God can have about grief and work and tears leading to joy and productiveness. Just as the field will not fail to produce its fruits, so the faithful man will earn his reward. However, you are right again that the main spiritual reference, to “first fruits,” looks to Christ and His resurrection as the promise of a blessed resurrection for His faithful. As I say in the poem, that is what the faithful farmer seeks in his self-directed employment, although the work is necessary to satisfy his needs and to accord with his virtues. Triptolemus is there, as you say, to indicate the ancient classic recognition of the same end. Greece and Rome accepted Christ in their maturity, so it’s an easy transition. In the Bible and in many agrarian cultures, the firstfruits of a harvest belong to God, to sanctify everything that will be gathered in, and to show trust in Him. One does not wait until the after-harvest Thanksgiving to give God His due: He gets the first or “prime sheaves” as pledge of the farmer’s fidelity and ultimate gratitude.

      The summary couplet reflects the nature of the farmer’s life. He farms as if he will be there forever to care for the land, yet with humble confidence that all will proceed with or without him, he’s ready to die tomorrow. As you say, that inspires him to live properly in accord with God and nature. The parallel expressions of the two lines work better without rhyme, but I do mean it. And hope to improve in readiness.

      Reply
  8. C.B. Anderson

    Many native Americans regarded the plow’s effect on the native grassland as the land being turned wrong-side-up. Maybe they were right, and maybe not, but civilization as we know it depended and depends on this unnatural upending of grassy plains. It’s a pity that this process has mostly enriched the Mississippi River Delta and the Lords of Midwestern agribusiness. Gone are the days when forty acres and a mule could ensure the future of a farming family.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Right, C. B. There are still farming families, especially in dairy or hog or chicken raising, but even for these the key to success is not the mule, but a part-time paying job for the wife.

      We now have no-till agriculture, supposed to prevent erosion. As far as I can tell, this means not turning the ground, but punching holes in it to deposit seed. You still need a tractor to make the punches–and, I suppose, a combine of some sort to harvest the part of the plant you want, and pull the residue out of the ground and maybe grind it up, so it won’t be in the way when spring punching time comes around again.

      Reply
  9. Maria

    Thank you for this beautiful poem that has made me nostalgic for a bygone era. My grandfather was a farmer and aptly named George. He farmed in Cyprus as farmers must have farmed for millennia . He was perhaps the last of that kind, no tractor and no combine harvester. The comments have also helped me to understand the many layers of this beautiful poem.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for your appreciative comment, Maria, on this “georgic” of mine. You probably know that’s a technical term for farming poetry, just as “pastoral” is for shepherd poetry. It’s good to think back on the ideals of those kinds of lives, and I’m glad this poem helped you do so.

      Reply
  10. Joseph S. Salemi

    The discussion thread here reminded me of something George Orwell wrote in his “Homage to Catalonia” (the account of his experiences in the Spanish civil war) regarding traditional plowing. The memory intrigued me enough to look it up again. Orwell was in a rural, agricultural part of Spain, and he describes the tillage he saw:

    Homage to Catalonia, Chapter 6 —

    “Men in ragged blue shirts and black corduroy breeches, with broad-brimmed straw hats, were ploughing the fields behind teams of mules with rhythmically flopping ears. Their ploughs were wretched things, only stirring the soil, not cutting anything we should regard as a furrow. All the agricultural implements were pitifully antiquated, everything being governed by the expensiveness of metal. A broken ploughshare, for instance, was patched, and then patched again, till sometimes it was mainly patches. Rakes and pitchforks were made of wood. Spades, among a people who seldom possessed boots, were unknown; they did their digging with a clumsy hoe like those used in India. There was a kind of harrow that took one straight back to the later Stone Age. It was made of boards joined together, to about the size of a kitchen table; in the boards hundreds of holes were morticed, and into each hole was jammed a piece of flint which had been chipped into shape exactly as men use to chip them ten thousand years ago. I remember my feelings almost of horror when I first came upon one of these things in a derelict hut in no man’s land. I had to puzzle over it for a long while before grasping that it was a harrow. It made me sick to think of the work that must go into the making of such a thing, and the poverty that was obliged to use flint in place of steel. I have felt more kindly towards industrialism ever since.”

    I think it was Orwell’s description of the painstakingly constructed flint harrow that stuck in my mind.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Joe, thanks for citing Orwell’s experience with primitive plowing in Spain. Writing of the 1930s, Orwell at home in England would have been familiar with the sort of plow used in my 1950s account. The author describes it in some detail, saying it came into use in England about 1700. The rear of the plow was supported by a small wheel or wheels, making for an easier ride over the ground, and thus using the strength of plow animals mainly to cut into the earth and turn it. Noticing dates of use, the plow I speak of was not available to earliest English settlers in America, which helps account for early misery in both New England and Virginia. But by the time more of the eastern seaboard was plowed, and certainly when the Midwest and Great Plains began to be farmed, this “high-tech” plow introduced from England did the job. The Spaniards Orwell encountered were probably isolated, as well as too poor to afford efficient metal equipment. England, on the other hand, was advanced in iron and steel production, and the United States soon became likewise. Notice, too, the post illustration, a painting from rural France in the late 1800s. Looks like those plowmen needed several oxen to drag the plow on the ground, while Americans could do the same work with a slightly elevated plow that was easier to pull by a pair of horses or even one sturdy mule. Technology matters!

      Reply
  11. Adam Sedia

    The closing couplet sums up your poem beautifully. You give us much more than a vivid description of the backbreaking and thankless task that unmechanized agriculture was and is; you tell us what it meant as a way of life. You remind us all of our not-so-remote ancestors and their connection to the earth, and build a bond of sympathy.

    By the way, the art chosen is one of my favorite paintings. I get lost in the detail – as though I’m standing right there watching.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Adam. It is good to have that bond of sympathy with those who do productive labor on the land. Today their work may be more mechanized than I describe here, but that final couplet nonetheless applies to many farmers undertaking the task to “provision a realm” small or large. They enter into the “forever” cycle of farm work that nurtures life, and live near a fullness of daily responsibility that tends to keep them ready to satisfy obligations of nature, order, and spirit.

      Reply
  12. BDW

    as per Aedile Cwerbus:

    Upon reading “Plowing”, like Mr. Farham, I thought of that great Classical piece of World literature–Vergil’s “Georgica”, a masterpiece that has informed my poetic practice for decades.

    The nostalgic tone of Ms. Coats “Plowing”, likewise led me to another loss–Sophocles “Triptolemus”.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you very much, Bruce, for your opinion indicating that my poem can, in some simple way, stand among classical georgics. Glad to know explicitly of your following Vergil’s plowing in the genre. And thank you as well for noticing that my reference to Triptolemus alludes not only to the myth, but also to the lost play by Sophocles. When we think that the number of his extant plays is equal to the number we know of, but do not have, that can add to regret for all that has passed out of our ken–in culture of the earth and culture of the pen.

      Reply
  13. BDW

    as per Aedile Cwerbus:

    Actually there is no poem in English literature that can “stand” with Vergil’s “Georgica”; but we can admire and learn from its enormous power; and, take solace in Romantic writer Thoreau’s thought that a “living dog is better than a dead lion.”

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      I was thinking of “georgics” standing together as a little explored lyric genre, in contrast to innumerable pastorals. The English work that might stand near Vergil in breadth of range would be Thomas Tusser’s “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,” though Tusser’s poetic skill is far below Vergil’s. These days we are likely to encounter Robert Frost as first-mentioned among georgic poets–along with relatively rare pieces by others. I see Caleb Wuri Seed is a new millennial representative. I’d be interested in knowing which other writers in English or poems in English you consider best among the georgics.

      Reply
      • BDW

        as per Aedile Cwerbus:

        Tusser’s couplets in “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry”, like many of Shakespeare’s earliest couplets, are crude compared even to the Augustan, British Neoclassical couplets of the 17th and 18th centuries—the era that most seriously took on Vergil, and secondarily Horace. Still Tusser, like many in the Elizabethan era, looked admiringly at the great body of Classical literature, including the “Georgics”. Yet I hardly think any writers after the PreRomantics deeply incorporated the accomplishments of the Latins into their writing. Certainly, even T. S. Eliot, who thought that “the classic of all Europe, is Virgil”, did not avail himself of the Roman Augustans, as either Dryden or Pope did. Even I have had the hardest time trying to meet the Ancient Romans, let alone the Ancient Greeks. I wonder if even a lifetime is enough to thoroughly take them on.

    • Margaret Coats

      Considering the project of “taking on” or “meeting” the ancient Romans or Greeks, one might spend a lifetime in the attempt, but you say that Dryden and Pope at least availed themselves of the earlier Augustans. This we could certainly do, in accord with our own gifts. I suppose you are thinking here of finesse in style, where we have much to learn. The subjects are another matter. I have taken some time to look over Pope, and granted that one might write a good poem on any subject, I find many of these fine lyrics in couplets so courtly as to be tedious. The satires, both original and translated or imitated, are better, but maybe because they show Pope’s own enthusiasm as well as his talent for the particular genre. The translated epics that form so large a part of his oeuvre may have been eagerly read for a considerable time, but no longer. If Pope is an example of success in meeting the ancients, is the attempt worthwhile? I’m not saying the ancient poetry isn’t, but questioning the approach of a later poet. But back to Vergil and the Georgics, I am still looking for more good English work in that genre.

      Reply
  14. BDW

    It’s not finesse I’m thinking of. It’s grandeur and pow’r won.
    Who? Chaucer? Spenser? Shakespeare? Milton? Dryden? Pope? Not one.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Bruce, my reply to this posted below, underneath Frank Rable’s comment.

      Reply
  15. Frank Rable

    Wonderful poem, Margaret. I enjoyed it. My favorite lines were “Oh, what a universe are we, Man, land and animals and weather, ”
    It calls to mind the determination of our ancestors to use all that they had to good effect.
    I live in a populated area, but less than an hour’s drive north are still family farms. Yes they use tractors and diesel fuel, they have little choice these days. But you’ll find that the Agricola spirit inhabit the souls of these farmers. More emphasis now on ecology, biology, and weather reports, but manure from their animals is still used when possible. These are not factory farms. If you can forgive the use of some farm machinery, and their distrust of real estate developers, you are still seeing a universe of man land animals and weather at play.

    Now this is maybe only my interpretation, but the rhythm of the poem was suggestive to me of a horse trotting. Maybe too fast for a horse and plow, but it says power. The combination of farmer, horse, and plow being the irresistible force hoping to dislodge that immovable rock.

    Reply
  16. Margaret Coats

    No? I find passages of grandeur and power in these poets. And in others of less renown. I will say, though, that grandeur partly depends on the kind of poem. In particular, epic and ode and paean and hymn and elegy can be places for suitable grandeur. The poet does not always achieve grandeur in these genres. He may lack skill, or his approach may not befit a grand style. Vergil is not always grand; he knows how to fit eloquence to the material at hand. In the Georgics, there are occasions for grandeur, but the topic of agriculture does not lend itself to grandeur in many aspects.

    As for power, that is an extremely difficult quality to define. Joseph Salemi and I have discussed how “power” at present may indicate only the use of strange or even weird language.

    I suspect we may be talking past one another because it is difficult to be profound and definitive in these comment boxes. But I do value the discussion. Thank you for your part in it.

    Reply
  17. Margaret Coats

    Frank, thanks for noticing the poem, and for enjoying it, and for taking time to comment. I too live near enough some family farms to appreciate the “agricola” determination these invaluable workers display. They do like keeping up the old ways as much as they can (such as having one sturdy horse not used for plowing any more, but for quick access to parts of the farm not near a roadway). I like your hearing a horse trotting in the meter of the poem. I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe it is the tetrameter with an even number of beats per line. I’m glad you read it as an indication of power in this ages-old lifestyle so fundamental to human flourishing.

    Reply

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