Poetry by Clare Best

To witness ploughing is a sensual feast the complex earth smells, the sound of the plough blades in the soil, the sight of the lines of furrow appearing in the ground, the way the field is tamed and patterned. And when land has just been ploughed, its colours are at their most vivid.

I suppose the act of ploughing hasn't really changed much over the centuries, it is only the source of locomotion that has changed! Ploughing, preparing the ground for seed, is an ordinary, extraordinary, part of life. It is repeated and repeated, through time and around the world, each time making ready for the miracle of growth.

Tractor with plough

Front tyres bulge,
water-filled so the beast won't rear up
with the weight of land and plough dragged behind.
Steel twists through chocolate ground
turning smooth clods under a pale sun.

True work, carving, folding soil,
a furrow fourteen inches wide, twelve deep.
Walk here, beside the blades, listen
to the whispered cut and slip of silt earth opened,
bared again for seed.