The Fallow Loam Laments

Jesse Doiron

March 18, 2021

Could not the ploughman

spare one more fallow year

before I lift the heavy crop

he loves to blade into me?

Then, perhaps, the grass,

that overwhelmed the May,

would hold my land again

and while the days unplanned

long after clover comes.

God knows, I never laughed

so much as last July,

when queens in cups hiccoughed

upon my northmost field

and sleekit mice played meek

beneath the blossomed lace.

Why, even night seemed warm

all the fall that followed,

with fiery boyish flies

yet seeking after maids.

And in the wee November light,

near winter’s winking eye,

the ploughman’s bairn

took his young lass to me.

Could not the son tell father now

the need I have to wait?

Good husbandman, if only 

loam had voice and such 

to speak, I’d beg you please:

Leave me but one more spring

to rest, untilled again,

and I will swear the barley

in my soil, next year, to love.

Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.