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Cultivating people can be arduous,
With results as uncertain as weather.
Try oysters, meerkats, turnips, mice.
My mouse field was a triumph of
Cultivation—pink noses poking
Through quilts of loam, scampering
In the furrows—until the falling
Dwarves (it was that time of year)
Began landing on my field. Fear for
Its harvest had me down on hands
And knees muttering, “Not here,”
My nails clawed at tangles of fat
Dwarves crushing mouse families.
Then, unbelievably, it was over.