BEHIND IT

In my hands, I want to feel
the crusted black loam
of generations: the hands
that slit the cattle’s throat,
strangled the chickens,
stroked the lamb’s ear,
grew calloused and sturdy
and bent. My mother,
watching the tractor
turn over the soil
on her ancestral farm-land,
saw the spinning wheel
of seagulls rising behind it,
to swoop and peck at any
chance green offal left exposed.
“I have to believe,” she said
“that a world this well planned
has to have some kind of force
at work behind it.”
I want to feel that in my hands;
a certainty to hold on to.