The Vermont Farm Year in 1890, by ​Norbert Hirschhorn

The Vermont Farm Year in 1890

based on an exhibit in 1990 at Billings Farm & Museum, Woodstock, Vermont

They survived the twelve-foot snow,
now sit frozen in the photograph,
silver granules freckling white
their solemn faces & calico.

They planned for their losses --
pressing seven seeds 
into each hole, rhyming,

One for the blackbird,
one for the crow,
one for the cutworm
four to let grow.

They planned for their losses,
even children,

One for the measles,
one for the cold,
one for the bloody flux,
four to grow old.

Their names kept them upright:
            
Asa, Ethan, Abigail, Dwight,
Hannah, Sarah, Nathan, Giles.

Their farms sprouted nouns & verbs,
all blunt & stubbled:

hoe   scythe   bellows
sieve   flail   winnow
coulter   felloe   peavy
yep      nope     mebbe

Work was played out in cadence:

broadcast oat seed, rye seed,
buckwheat & barley;
walk & swing, a lot like dancing.

Rout out tussocks,
haul out boulders,
load up the stone-boat
to build strong fences.

As you tread between the tombs
(weeping angels and seraphim)
please observe how oft there’s 
two of her to one of him.

clean  glean  chop  milk  comb
card   spin   weed  feed  grind
cook  bake  curd  churn  pluck
sew   treat   teach   birth  suckle
                bury  pray

They depleted the land of woods.
Used themselves up, wore themselves out,
made themselves do or did without.

Their epitaphs are everywhere --
tumbleweed, dandelion seed,
brambles shrouding cellar holes,
stone walls tumbling down the fall line.

​Norbert Hirschhorn

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. Hirschhorn has published seven previous collections, recently a bilingual Arabic-English co-translation with Syrian physician-poet Fouad M. Fouad, Once Upon a Time in Aleppo. The seventh collection has just been published (June, 2023), Over the Edge, Holland Park Press, London. See: www.bertzpoet.com.