The old farmer hung back,
as rickety and battered as the
‘50s Allis-Chalmers tractor upon
which he leaned, hunched,
clung, as if the auctioneer's words
and the wind might carry him off
like the implements he'd treasured
much of his life, machines with
which he had toiled and sweated
and which had helped him chisel
out a meager existence in his
40 years on the farm. His wife was
dead now, his children scattered
like the clucking chickens and hissing
geese, all he had left were memories
and the old homestead, and it was
leaving him bit by bit on the backs
of creaking pickups and low boys
and stuffed into the cavities of shiny
new Cadillacs and Buicks. The cruel
wind had driven in from the southwest,
stealing a little more topsoil from the
threadbare farm, swirling and *******
at tattered curtains still hanging in
the mouths of grimy windows left ajar.
With each piece of his life leaving
down that gravel road, a draining
of his dreams and energies followed.
A few more raps of the gavel and he
too would be as dust in the wind.
--
Nov 22, 2011
Nov 22, 2011 at 9:39 PM UTC
The old farmer hung back,
as rickety and battered as the
‘50s Allis-Chalmers tractor upon
which he leaned, hunched,
clung, as if the auctioneer's words
and the wind might carry him off
like the implements he'd treasured
much of his life, machines with
which he had toiled and sweated
and which had helped him chisel
out a meager existence in his
40 years on the farm. His wife was
dead now, his children scattered
like the clucking chickens and hissing
geese, all he had left were memories
and the old homestead, and it was
leaving him bit by bit on the backs
of creaking pickups and low boys
and stuffed into the cavities of shiny
new Cadillacs and Buicks. The cruel
wind had driven in from the southwest,
stealing a little more topsoil from the
threadbare farm, swirling and *******
at tattered curtains still hanging in
the mouths of grimy windows left ajar.
With each piece of his life leaving
down that gravel road, a draining
of his dreams and energies followed.
A few more raps of the gavel and he
too would be as dust in the wind.
--
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