Memorials

You see them in the fields
Still farmed by non corporate farmers.
An individual tree roughly centered
(Or they were before the field was reduced
By houses or expanded with the farm).
Generations old, full and wide from not being crowded
Unless they’ve been split by lightening
Or the eventual, inevitable rot.
They were purpose left or grown there.

I like to picture the farmer
With his horse team or small, chugging tractor
Stopping in the early afternoon
And greeting his wife or young child,
Standing under the tree with a pail
Containing a sandwich, canned fruit, jar of water.
He had eaten a large farm breakfast and will have a good supper
This is as much to get out of the sun, to rest
For a few moments, resting his team
And to ease the loneliness of working alone
With a quick conversation,
His mind on the acreage left to work,
The daylight remaining to get it done

The tree, though – most have been long sense removed
As a hindrance to the behemoth tractors.
Removed as were the old hedgerows
that used to mark so nicely
The fields of the county’s farms.