Toast brown, he and the mule plow ridges
for tobacco. A sweet spring flows
from the hills to his forty acres.
Waiting for autumn’s crop, the weathered barn
stands empty. Mornings, his wife tends
chickens, scatters corn, collects eggs.
She makes biscuits and milk gravy
from last evening’s meal, hangs wash to dry.
Now, driving past on the four lane–all that is left
is the listing barn covered with poison ivy,
chinking between the timbers dried
and falling out, metal roof peeled open.
Furrows are filled with Little Blue Stem
and Queen Anne’s Lace.
And the old stone foundation encircled
by the daffodils she had planted.
Front Porch Review
Jan 2018
