SNUB nose, the guts of twenty mules are in your cylinders and transmission.
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.
It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.
The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules—he sings to you instead of ten span of mules.
A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and oats.
Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere in the fields with the stars for a roof.
I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel—it’s good-by now to leather reins and the songs of the old mule skinners.
As a landscape poet who rides an old Massey-Ferguson, I’ve been thinking of nicknaming my tractor after an American or British poet. Ted Hughes wrote “Tractor,” which, although the story of a winter cold start, lacks the visceral realness of Sandburg’s prairie langauge. So I’d vote for “Carl” when naming a tractor in America, even if it was invented by an Irishman.