Broken glass on trampled earth
hammered iron rusting under rotting burlap
leather reins still wrapped around the harrow handle
the ghosts of animals in their empty stalls
their honest scents still rich in the beams and timbers
and not much else
all that's left after so much work to make a life
eight successive generations
no one pretending they were something else
they were farmers and they farmed
so little outlasts flesh and bone
here the barn and here the fields
and here the house with wind in its attic
its mud room fallen into the cellar hole
its roof leaking and standing not much longer,
it seems a holy place in need of preservation
a way of life most have forgotten
look back far enough and find
all of us were farmers once.
