Wednesday, October 28, 2009

FARMER

We have busted knuckles and sliced fingertips, blood shed on limestone and offered back to the earth. Those summer days baked our skin into scales and leather. I used to daydream about railroad tracks plowing through the sky, and raise my eyes to watch that train roar by. At night, there was a boxfan in the window to soothe our burns and aches.

Oh, I learned so much about myself. I feel older now, but none the wiser. The choices I've made have offered little solace. I find inspiration in my father, and I pray to Gawd that he never feels defeated, for then I too will feel only defeat. He is my barometer, and that farm will always be my home. I can never fall too far, too hard, knowing what waits at the end of old Slate Road.

I've woken up shaking and sweating on bathroom floors, and I didn't think I was going to survive this summer. But I can't bring myself to throw away what I don't need. Maybe it'll prove useful someday, like chicken shit and tablescraps. What else did I learn on the farm?

I want to say so many things to you, but so many pairs of ears would hear it, and believe it meant for them alone. They'd all be wrong. This is for no one anymore, no one but myself. I'll keep my head down, humbled but not broken, and keep tilling and sowing and reaping, baking in the sun. Someday I'll pull the scales from my eyes and change my name, like Saul on the road to Damascus.

I just want to spend my days like dreams, and save my abstractions and selfless hope for my father and his farm. There is no hope for me, the way I've been carrying on. Oh, look at my father. My back's just as bad, and my heart's just as sore, and I'm not sure I want to be a farmer anymore.