Eulogy to an Early, Great Plain's, American Farmer

On a dusty, Great Plain's path

rolls a mule-drawn wagon

carrying a grizzled, wooden

box to its final resting place-

a shady Oak tree with scraggly

limbs, and a sparse acorn yield,

an Eastern transplant like its

cultivator that symbolizes the

toils of short, unforgiving summers,

and the spirit of a transient ploughboy

His calloused hands released from the plow;

sterile fingers now melded to throttled

wooden box, blistered feet no longer to

tread measured rows, forthwith to fertilize

the crooked channels of blind moles, and

furrowed brow that pressed the coming

seasons, burrows in the shifting soil;

sentient mind that calculated seed yields

now addled brain fallowing in listless weeds

heart that longed to see fields of golden

wheat, beneath a cobbled cross pointing

to the Summer Triangle's eternal Summer

Time kept by Day's soaring sun

now spindled through the grains

of a buried hourglass.

Rusticated barn with its life-giving

store traded for the meager mold

of a rotting coffin. Sturdy clapboard

shack shunned for a shallow grave

covered with lifting sands.

Cultivated wheat tassels exchanged

for two, transplanted wild flowers

A doleful wind curdles the Plains,

not a requiem to a molesting hand,

for no man could tame the grifting

wind, or shield the sun's seething

beams. A soliloquy to a meager

itinerant, who barely scratched its

native strain, and only lightly tossed

its swirling soil.