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The iron tooth bites into the morning
Turning the clay over, wet and cold
There’s a ridge on the webbing of my right hand
That locks blindly onto this ashwood pole
My father's sweat sank deep into the grain
And my son’s hand will wear the timber down
We walk the lines behind the pulling beast
Just to earn the right to sleep upon the ground

So pull the earth up over our heads
Like a heavy woolen blanket on a winter bed
This is the hide we crawl inside to live
And this is the hide the steward comes to strip
It keeps the frost from the bone
But it cuts your shape into the stone

The riders came in August with a knotted cord
Looking for the edges of a name
They didn't smell the sweet smut on the barley heads
They just tallied up the corners of the claim
They counted every mouth beside my fire
Weighed us out in furrows and in mud
A ledger full of neatly drawn out squares
Paid for in the muscle and the blood

So pull the earth up over our heads
Like a heavy woolen blanket on a winter bed
This is the hide we crawl inside to live
And this is the hide the steward comes to strip
It keeps the frost from the bone
But it cuts your shape into the stone

The ox breathes a thick fog into the dawn
His shoulders strain against the yoking peg
We are carving our survival in the crust of the world
Working off the very thing we beg
Every ditch is a stitch in the seam
Binding us to the soil, and the soil to the king

Underneath the covering.
Counted by the ledger and the grain.
One house. One hearth.
One patch of dirt to take the rain.
And the iron turns the clay over
Again.
And just a little wider than the peg.