A Bounteous Harvest

(my acknowledgement
to the loose canon of Robert Frost)

An above average snowfall
heavily swathed sage heather
followed by substantial unusual rainfall
punctuated months before, during and
after the growing season

delivered one of the
most hearty crop yields
in living memory
within the generations of men
of this (or any neighboring)

Norwegian bachelor farmer
long time residents
feeling like the sole housekeeper
of Lake Woebegone,
who can remember

the Edenic pasture with reluctance
raw bits and pieces mending wall
experiencing crushing childhood's end
weathered by their parents,
who as kids themselves

(during the worst
fear full Depression
in thee United States of America)
when countless farmers forced
by circumstance declared bankruptcy

locked out of hearth and home
no recourse 'cept to sell rural legacy...
family property deeds
(traced back to original settlers)
contrasts sharply with

plentiful, crucial, and
over abundant annual
precipitation, whereby these vestiges
of rural quaint lifestyle
awash with expansive lush cornfields,

whose silk like tassels
synchronously undulate
(sparsely dotting pastoral landscape),
blistered, calloused, and damned,
whether weathered by blizzards,

or pounded with powerful (one...two)
top notch pugilistic punch
topographical scars permanently earmark,
where Ole man winter relentlessly socked
or Mother Nature slammed a wall of water

saturating freshly mown hay,
which pungent odor
belied teeming flora and fauna
(albeit many organisms nearly invisible)
yet keenly observable to hawk eye,

also tempting black crows
to carrion camping
while a flock of seagulls
swoop down upon unsuspecting
school of fish,
and/or scurrying varmints.