Artist's Gallery
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| The Old Barn |
And now, a final poem I wrote last summer:
Farm of the Past
Surrounded by a surging sea of grain
The old farm, near deserted, stands alone;
Its silos rise like beacons o'er the plain
To hail once more the harvest season come.
The length'ning shadows of the setting sun
Fall softly on the quiet, rugged barn,
Whose rafters echo yet with lowing calls
Of milking cattle from those days long gone.
The sparrows dart to
nests beneath the eaves,
Hard-working tools and rusty wagons rest;
Old musty bales
of straw lie in the loft,
While memories of the farmer’s work creep past:
The
empty cattle walk and milking stalls,
The barnyard overgrown with thorns and
sticks,
Rough fences, iron gates, and on the wall,
A license plate from 1966.
The silos flank the
barn like sentries tall,
Their worn stone walls have sheltered years of grain;
Strong
pulleys, iron rods, and rusty pipes
May never handle fodder corn again.
How has the
small-time farmer’s work been lost?
The harvest’s precious, priceless product
gold?
Has industry completely swept the field
Of tractors, haystacks, milking
herds of old?
Gone are the family
farm work, faith, reward,
Though harvest time continues year by year;
Only the
empty barns and tools preserve
The farmer’s hard-worked livelihood so dear.
