The Golden Age of Agriculture
Another tank town by at sixty.
Water towers with painted testimonials loom
and recede, but in the vertical hierarchal,
grain elevators are sentinel over all—
pole buildings, barns, a thousand acres gone to seed,
buttonwood trees that range along a river
like pensioners. I drop down—
swoop Main Street—find it rotten—
an old dog grousing in the heat,
young folk gone, dissatisfied,
and it’s far too quiet for this time of year.
Locals lost to age, rebellion, or gone in the head.
I picture rifles cocked, noses crooked, faces pressed
against the stock—‘agin’evolutions of any stripe.
(Perhaps the Christ child reappears,
mangered in an old tin shed,
suckled in a flatbed truck.)
If by some trick or wild design
I could spend a second lifetime here, I’d work
for someone just like me with a face like mine—
ambition forsaken, save for an occasional line
sprayed on a roof for a crow to read. I am
a prodigal farmer's son. If no one knows me,
no one will know that I’ve fallen.
– steve trebellas