Boustrophedon

Large harvests. Larger.
Larger. Less labor.
Better conveyance
And better storage.
It hasn’t broken,

This ratchet, hasn’t
Relaxed the sequence
For ten thousand years.
Good soil. Large harvests.
Feed the conquerors.

One of the dark-skinned
Hunter-gatherers
From the northern fjords
Captured in a raid
Was made a farmer

Or enslaved farmhand,
Maybe, in Jutland,
Five or six thousand
Years ago. He went
From whale meat to goat.

He died in a bog
With his head coshed in.
Farming kept moving,
Plowing north and west,
Searching for more soil.