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Century Farm

Third Place Winner - 2011 Poetry Contest

White clapboard worn to silver sits
straddling the crest of a dark wave of soil, 
sailing a froth of sand atop the dark, implacable earth.
Below us in the trough, hidden now by the spray
off June's green bowsprit runs the river, 
the current towards which we are slowly, 
inexorably crashing, the hill a wave that reared
past glaciers, has been traveling back 
ever since to the depths, slumping 
under the weight of us: a century
at least of cowbells and beehives,
of pitchforks and silo staves,
whiskey bottles and bailing twine.
Our five generations mere flotsam and jetsam, 
derelict cargo borne along on the current of years.
Just detritus to be swept under the keel.
The earth plows itself, slowly turning us all under. 

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Contributors

Jessi Peterson grew up roaming the fields and woods of southern Illinois and western Wisconsin, where she learned the singular magic that comes from knowing the names of things, be they animal, vegetable or mineral. She lives in a cordwood cabin she built with husband Dan overlooking the Chippewa River in western Wisconsin.

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