TAKING A CUT

New Year should mark a kind of survival.

It’s just another day on this sodden pasture

creased with rounded strips. Stagnant pools

and mantled sludge fill the troughs between.

Ewes nose and fret among tarpaulined hay.

Spring will shoot wiry and tousled like the heifers-

in-calf and white-faced bullocks put out to browse.

Brothers hold the lease but seldom work in tandem.

On a bleak crown put to plough I watch Ivor

hitch shares and turn from three-furrow plod.

He’s welded to his open-top, orange Nuffield

under torn cap and gaberdine so greased

they’re wind-and-water-proof. Ready to chat

he notches back the throttle and scans ripples

he’s sliced from this mat of bristling stubble. “Dry

underneath, just like powder. Look at it!

All that rain overnight! Where’d it go, eh?”

Scouring the ground with yardstick glance

he makes the cussed way of things worth a thought.

“Glad you’re holding on to all your hedges,” I say.

“We’re stockmen. Beeves and ewes like a storm break.”

I meet brown eyes used to sizing up beasts.

“Big farmer, Glooston way, ripped the lot out.

Gales scattered his top-soil after a March drought.

Harrow and drill again? Not likely. Too late!

Laid that hedge myself ten years back.

See how it’s come on, except where my brother

made holes in it burning straw and stubble.”

Chill January rain cuts us short.

He’ll face it, grabbing up the iron crust,

firm behind wayward wheel and belching pipe,

though the yearly survival of stock is on his mind.