Truth

Text of Poem	How the devil do I know if there are rocks in your field, plow it and find out. If the plow strikes something harder than earth, the point shatters at a sudden blow, and the tractor jerks sidewise and dumps you off the seat— because the spring hitch isn’t set to trip quickly enough and it never is—probably you hit a rock. That means the glacier emptied his pocket in your field as well as mine, but the connection with a thing is the only truth that I know of, so plow it.
First Line	How the devil do I know
Original Pub Location	Sparrow Magazine
Original Publication Date	1961
Original Citation	Sparrow Magazine (April 1961) 19.
Republication	Heartland: Poets of the Midwest 79, Interpreting Literature. 4th ed. K.L. Knickerbocker and H.W. Reninger, eds. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1969. 289, Interpreting Literature. 5th ed. 1974. 19, North American Review (1974) 19, The Iowan (Spring
Complete Poems	131
Hearst Collections	Limited View 38, Snake in the Strawberries 28, The Good Earth 67.
Word Count	93
Poetic Form	closed
Bibliographic Notes	Sparrow 1984 reprint listed in IAPV 1984.
Observations	One of Jim's top 10.
Themes	knowledge farming
Twitter Quote	the connection with a thing / is the only truth that I know of,

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