What do you think this poem means?

Question

Truth


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.

Answer 1

Life throws unacceptable or difficult to bear truths at each of us.

How can your neighbor know which truths will unseat you, or throw you off track?

Different truths affect each of us differently, and how can we know when they will arise for each of us?

The only way to know is to live (to plow).

Life (the glacier) drops them on all of us.

Have to live and experience to find out. Experience is the best teacher.

"James Schell Hearst was born in Black Hawk County near Cedar Falls, Iowa in 1900. Hearst cultivated his interest in writing early in life, in eighth grade rewriting prose stories into verse. At the age of nineteen, Hearst became a paraplegic after a diving accident in the Cedar River. [BIG rock for HIM, don't you think?] For much of his life Hearst, along with his brother, Charles, was an active farmer on the Hearst family farm, Maplehearst, near Cedar Falls. Hearst wanted to use his writing to "tell the truth about farming and about life as it is lived on a farm," (The North American Review, Fall 1974)." [see second link, below]

That's my opinion, anyway! :-))

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

If YOU want to know the truth (or as close to it as anyone can get), then you've got to seek it out yourself. Don't ever depend on anyone else, however well-meaning, to find your truth for you!
In short, ya gotta do the work, have the experience, to get the result!

Answer 3

Forge ahead, expect to hit snags in life, take your lumps and move on. They left out the "not a bowl of cherries" reference but otherwise the old saws are all in there and the moral is that it's a tough row to hoe and then you die.

Answer 4

Are you or somone else trying to pass this off as poetry? It isn't even coherent prose. It means, as far as I can translate, experience is the best teacher, find out for yourself.

Answer 5

I think it means find things out for yourself,don't always believe what others tell you.

Answer 6

This is not actually a poem it is more accurately referred to as CRAP

Answer 7

You call this poetry?