The Furrow Keeps Its Line

A plow does not decide where the field ends. It follows the line drawn by the last pass, and that line follows the one before it, back to some first cut nobody living remembers making. Soil turned this way for a hundred seasons forgets it was ever unbroken. Turn it under, and worms rewrite the dark according to old law. Rain falls the same on furrow and weed both, but only one remembers to hold water in its rows. Somewhere beneath the tractor's path, the ground still carries the shape of a hand that stopped guiding it decades ago. The furrow does not ask who is walking behind it now.