There is a place I have never liked:

Jo Davis county, with its John Deere tractors

and three a.m. families, dirty for life,

and the Saguenay Valley, where French rings

from young mouths, and every family

has the history of trappers.

I come from a line of farmers

and musicians.  They are all dead.

There is no going back to what they knew.

A Cucurbito pepo will come back

the next season, despite the killing efforts

of a hoe.  The broad leaves and orange flowers

have given one fruit in the garden,

now food for rabbits and mice.

This ancient pulp is all seed and dying –

the harvest full of nothing I know.