The Farmer

   I

  There was once a farmer who with a smile endured
  The test of memory and in time inspired
  The stuff of legend: once a man became
  The hero and the villain and the dream
  Behind the smile became the memory
  Of someone else.  There was once a farmer, and he
  Worked hard to plow his thousand acre field
  Each spring, preparing someone else’s food
  With modern tools.  Allow this tale to start
  With shares of metal dragging through dirt
  And give the man a toil hardened grin
  And a severed hand; then let this truth be told
  Of every farmer whose every smile reveals
  Defiance, grit, survival, victory,
  But leave it there: a hundred stories end
  Where one begins and all of history
  Breathes the air of every once upon a time.


  II
 
  There was once a time when smiles disappeared
  Throughout the county, turning to a hard
  Reality: the cruelest of crimes
  Came to their world and crushed the quiet dreams
  Of an adolescent girl and of the whole
  Community.  There was once a time when all
  Work stopped to hear the echoes of a gun,
  And it felt like everyone who heard the sound  Had pulled the trigger.  Oh dear audience
  Expecting simple songs and sweet romance
  Imagine you were there holding the gun
  That fateful Friday night; and picture this,
  A steadfast smile suddenly replaced
  With emptiness, then guilt, then rage and blame,
  And there you were, the gun still in your hand
  Above your victim, for the rest of time
  The final breath of a thirteen year old girl.


  III
 
  She was once a summer smile that never feared
  Forever, thought forever was a word
  That didn’t end: she smiled like it was summer
  All the time, and by persistent dreams
  And distant memories her ghost pretends
  That nothing’s changed.  There was once, and there remains
  Worked in the weave of our surviving souls,
  The strand of innocence of teenaged smiles
  On summer nights.  Forgive us, farmer, for the blood
  We can’t unspill, collect the tears we’ve shed
  But let us smile that she may live again
  To find forever; let this be her truth,
  The ultimate discovery of youth:
  Not liberty, not passion, not abandon
  But innocence: accept this first and final
  Plea, the strand of our salvation and
  The breath that gives us immortality.