Potato Country
Spring rain left dams full as bellies after chips for tea;
summer pumps a fun-fair of fire-hose pressure over paddocks,
the whirligigs arc high, hit sky and soak a green crowd.
Fields are fanned cooler than degrees which crack ground
oven-ready for potato moths, the six hourly switch
of tractors and pipes relentless as class-sorting at the factory.
Round here on hot days cattle wilt near fence lines for drizzle
to drift their way, farm dogs lap full ditches and high winds peel spindrift
off curved-curtain rails of water like shifts of skin. Everyone knows
everyone, the taste of a raw rural economy and, never mash a Pink-eye,
keep Kennebecs for roasting and Dutch Creams for family dinners
where talk revolves around fixed prices or the need to diversify.
Butter-fingered harvesters whine ‘wide-loads’ up country roads
to chew through acres, spitting spuds into cock-eyed trucks
that slant down. Drivers in battered hats tip the same finger to neighbours
or strangers, and at every dip or turn you’ll see generations
of potato growers in revolutions of the irrigator’s spray, plumes
that hang around for seconds before the spectres walk away.
Published Quadrant, October 2003
|
