137 years

her family worked this land.

It’s who they are.

The farm is still there,

but not theirs any more.

She is a runner,

venturing out

from a parent plant

whose roots,

once deep and secure,

have been pulled up.

She helped loosen the soil

that held it there

to transplant it

in town,

the brown earth of the farm

clinging stubbornly to the roots,

dark and moist,

against the town’s loam.

 

I wrote this poem in March 1993 as a friend helped her aging parents move from their Century Farm to town. This farm held so much of her family’s identity in its soil.