Yarrow House

Rock Farm

Stone harvest, grey, ocher, brown,
the largest crop we raised.
Pebbles, gravel, boulders of all sizes
spewed from the skin of the farm
year after year like seeds,
ready to grow new planets.
Bat them into the sky and see
if they would fly, baby Terras
following their mother who spit them out
hoping for a ripe one.
If only you could plant them
and grow stoneless land.
What a harvest that would be.

Winter mornings, sun-warmed, 
the frozen earth pulled back from
each irregular pebble,
the hard forms meeting in their little holes—
babies on the back of a giant frog 
that hops through space, we two-legs clinging. 
“Are we upside down now?” 
I'd stretch my arms and imagine diving 
down into the ancient night.

                                               Frost
brought up the rocks, the farmers said,
working them out of the earth with a slow 
season-long pulse, slipping them out 
easy as eggs, for us to pick and pile.

Now I know they are the voiceless words 
that signal loss. Their rich loam washed away, 
down the hill, tracing the watershed, 
filling the creeks, brown and fertile 
clear to the sea, an ocean-going farm 
that left ashore unwitting farmers 
planting gardens, raising stones.

Published in Amicus Journal (1983) and The Immigrant, Court Street Press, (1984).

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Onetime reproduction for non-resale purposes permitted by the author with the following credit line: by J Yarrow