Keith Polette

Furrows

It was an old tractor, reddened with rust, with pinched front wheels and a metal seat that hovered on a heavy spring.  The first time my grandfather let me drive it, I could barely reach the heavy pedals, and I wobbled at the wheel in the rough field, but his cracked hands, placed on top of mine, kept me straight and steady.  He told me stories of his grandfather, who had battled a blight of locusts, who had been scarred by a boar that he’d spooked during rutting season, who had nearly gotten into a gunfight with a neighbor, the widower, Solomon Brown, over a fence dispute.  As I drove the afternoon towards dusk, my grandfather continued to seed the day with stories.

summer sundown—
my pen poised over the page
ready to plough

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About the Author

Keith Polette lives in El Paso, Texas. He is the author of a book of haiku, The New World, and a book of haibun, Pilgrimage, both published by Red Moon Press. Pilgrimage won the 2021 Merit Book Award for Best Haibun Book from the Haiku Society of America.