Countless Green

by Becky Seward

This is a poem I wrote in 2006 for my undergraduate thesis at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, but I still find it relevant to the farm life I live today. It was written about my last day on a farm I worked on for nearly five years.

Countless Green
It was my first and last day
on the plow
in the secluded North Field
our dream space

Behind me
behind the buzzing machine
lay many pearly crests
Her underbelly

On my last farm day
I sat baking in the
warm sanctuary
of the greenhouse
pulling the tendrils
of chickweed
from between the
little mustards

I lost myself for a minute
in the dusting of lichen
on the black soil
shimmering with silver bits

I wiped away the green
then the first and second layer
of silver-speckled black

Each layer a mosaic
of unraveling silver and loam

This life is living sculpture
it is plotting and planting
like so many blooming brushstrokes

It is toiling towards
the perfect convergence
of pride and people and wild

It is unpredictable art
with a menacing palette
of blood, ice, feathers, sweat,
manure, soil, tears, mud, rain, and
countless shades of green