Some crackling corn stalks stood waiting
on the implements to come cut them down
surveyed by a buzzard banking
its black waxed feathers above the hot spot,
the heated wind an excuse for
the old Rembrandt man to stay indoors

Before asphalt mirages waved solar radiation
off the new road past his shack it was
limestone dust that coughed a hundred
years of agony behind the wagon wheel
way back when obituaries were delivered
by your neighbor instead of the newspaper

His face looked as cracked as
a mud bed under the Comanche sun
His bluebonnet eyes didn't mind
the weeds no more ~ esthetics not being
as important when you get past a
certain age except the area around both
tombstones engraved with "Baby Angel"

And when the rooster crowed on Sunday
he'd travel down the road a ways to New Life
Church where they taught the meaning of
life and death so he could carry on another dawn
at the little farm he called Almost Heaven

Written by Sara Fielder © July 2016