2 
in the background are contoured strip-crops; they have been "curled"
by 
the erosion engineer to retard the ran-off. The water must be confused 
by so much advice. 
Everything on this farm spells money in the bank. The farmstead 
abounds in fresh paint,-steel, and concrete. A date on the barn 
commemorates the founding fathers. The roof bristles with lightning 
rods, the weather cock is proud with new gilt. Even the pigs look 
solvent. 
The old oaks in the woodlot are without issue. There are no hedges, 
brush patches, fencerows, or other signs of shiftless husbandry. The 
cornfield has fat steers, but probably no quail; the dry stalks are 
thriftily bare. The fences stand on narrow ribbons of sod; whoever 
plowed that close to barbed wires must have been saying "Waste not,
want 
not". 
In the creekbottom pasture, flood-trash is lodged high in the bashes. 
The creek banks are raw; chunks of Illinois have sloughed off and moved 
seaward. Patches of giant ragweed mark where freshets have thrown down 
the silt they could not carry. Just who is solvent? For how long? 
The highway stretches like a taut tape across the corn, oats, and 
clover; the bus ticks offthe opulent miles; the passengers talk and talk

4 
and talk. About what? About Tarawa, baseball, taxes, son-in-laws, black 
markets, movies, motors, and funerals, but never about the heaving ground-

swell of Illinois that washe. the windows of the speeding bus. Illinois 
has no genesis, no history, no bottaii, no tides of life and death. Illinois

is only the sea on which they sail to ports unknown.