Five farms i ride through most evenings,
miles from the main road, passing
a few farmers busy with farming,
exchanging salutes as i pedal by,
sunlight low across banded fields
and flush against red barns
and old-fashioned, two-story,
steep-roofed farm houses,
flooding their porches with gold,
bordered with dahlias, cats on their sides,
cows in the broad green pastures
after milking, lifting their heads
as I go, farms part of the hills,
abandoned or working still known
by the old names, mostly German
in these ancient rock-strewn mountains,
what had been ten now become five,
yet here is where they are still born and bred,
the men and women who save the country.
Long may they flourish, longer survive.
