Dave Bonta's short poem looks at a farm and turns it into something stranger and heavier than a postcard. The speaker says that out on the farm "we see / the weight of the present," as if labor makes time itself something you can feel pressing down. The workers seem to be trying hard, almost anxiously, to "deserve / a bit of rain," which suggests how much they depend on weather they can't control. Rain here feels like something earned, or at least hoped for.
Then the image shifts: something is "green as the sea," which could be the crops or the fields rolling like water. The poem ends abruptly on "having spent hours killing," and it never says what is being killed. Judging by the setting, it might be weeds or pests, but the open ending leaves an uneasy edge. The mood is quiet, tired, and a little ominous. Farm work looks beautiful and necessary, but the poem hints that it also has a cost.