Both of my parents came from farming families (Kentucky and Georgia), and many of their aunts and uncles and cousins stayed in farming. Both of them helped with the tobacco harvest when they were kids. Reading your poem, I can see the gravel roads and smell the tobacco barns (comparison with the way mistletoe hangs is apt) where we visited. (I've been in the mountains of North Carolina a lot as well.)
Your contrast between the labor of words and labor in the fields also resonates for me (and reminds me of Heaney's "Digging").
Bill's comment above gets to a lot of it. I suppose these poems are mostly about a sense of duty to a place: you grew up there and you want to preserve something of it, even if the work you're doing wouldn't necessarily be understood, and even if you're not certain of doing an adequate job.
Both of my parents came from farming families (Kentucky and Georgia), and many of their aunts and uncles and cousins stayed in farming. Both of them helped with the tobacco harvest when they were kids. Reading your poem, I can see the gravel roads and smell the tobacco barns (comparison with the way mistletoe hangs is apt) where we visited. (I've been in the mountains of North Carolina a lot as well.)
Your contrast between the labor of words and labor in the fields also resonates for me (and reminds me of Heaney's "Digging").
Peace!
No one does these analogies so well as Heaney--you're quite right to identify the influence! Glad it evoked some of the things I was going for.
This conjures so many feelings and memories, but I'd love to hear this read from your mind, voice and heart. M
Bill's comment above gets to a lot of it. I suppose these poems are mostly about a sense of duty to a place: you grew up there and you want to preserve something of it, even if the work you're doing wouldn't necessarily be understood, and even if you're not certain of doing an adequate job.