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Farmer's Rain Day
Folder:
American Bed Time Stories prison bars
fall from the sky
pitter
patting
on the tin outside
the farmer's
behind schedule
"rain drops
are a blessing"
he murmurs
between curses
beggars can't be
choosers, he recalls
and the amount of beggars
grow
a process fed by greed
which feeds the few
if only he could steal
some of the decadence
for his fields
then prison bars
falling from the sky
pitter
patting
on the tin outside
would feel like they used to feel
when he and his little sister splashed in the mud
and when he and his spouse took vows by the pond
then danced barefoot in the rain
like they twirled beneath a fountain emitting stars
This speaks to me since one
This speaks to me since one side of my family come from a farming background and the other half was in ranching. A lot of the time their lives were governed by the land and the weather but also influenced by the powers that be of the current day they were living. This is an eye opener of a poem. Thanks for sharing. /Rik.
here is poetry that doesn't always conform
galateus, arkayye, arqios,arquious, crypticbard, excalibard, wordweaver
I like the allusiveness of
I like the allusiveness of this poem, which reminds me so much of parts of T, S. Eliot's East Coker.
Starward
Thank you for sharing the
Thank you for sharing the connection that Farmer's Rain Day made for you. To be able to even serve as a reminder of a T.S. Eliot work is well more than enough for me : )
Poem In Future-Now Tense
A swipe as old plenty and contemporary scarcity - we will eat fine, the drought prone lesser countries I feel for. Will we plant more this year? I hope so. Wheat for the world - yea! California fruit/veggies, not so much without water.
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The usa western veggie growers have grief. Big investments will fail - moving sad but even with water, Michigan lost population (and Congressional seats). Huge Farms here thrive whereas competition is a good thing - right? Let the farmer migration begin!
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~A~
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The 1930's (and 1940's) could
The 1930's (and 1940's) could have been called The War on Farmers. Of course, as history demonstrates, Big Business (such as Conagra and United Fruit - thel latter being today's "Dole") won in a slaughter. The public largely abandoned small plot farming both as a result of being forced in greater numbers out of homes and into slums and apartments during the Depression, and then with the hype of the processed food industry that followed in the 1950's. Since then, it's been a struggle to keep local farming alive, and that has been a large set up for this moment. A rude awakening now coming for most, but for anyone who has been trying to produce food for their family and/or their community for the last several decades, they already knew. So this poem is a bit of "future-now tense", as you quite well detected, and also a story that's already been lived for a long, long time.
It's also personal, to some degree, because there some elements that come from my own experience. And having to wait out a rain day when there was so much to be done was literally what had me sitting down at that moment, leading to the write : )
Wait Out A Rain Day
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Farm perspective--rain emprisons farmers -kept from much to do. I have an eye full of drought fields and dust. We have so much here - land, lakes: how much is 35 tonnes of infant non-allergenic formla. Plus - last of the Boomers are buying the farm (horrible pun) yet we lose a generation. That should ease housing shortage while we evict millions. Going back to the farm may have merit.
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~S~
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