Through my car’s open window and their plate glass,
I see the elderly couple
who own the store. They’re in argument,
or at least in disagreement
about something… A little way north, Black Angus
lie down in the pasture beside
the river. Some say that means rain, and it may.
Our last surviving farm:
what prophets will serve when the cows are all gone?
The day’s final train is moaning
like an agonized spirit. Even I can hear it
with these ruined old ears of mine.
I’m just on my way to buy salad greens–
no allegory here.
We can’t plant them ourselves for a spell. It’s March.
Pigeons perch on the ridgeline
of the weary barn like dark stalagmites
as real dark comes on. With owls.
The scrawny farmer draws a shade.
He smokes more than he eats.
I can make of all this a morbid scene
if I choose. But I don’t choose,
even on passing the cemetery
where our modest headstone will stand,
my wife’s name carved next to mine.
When I pass here again, my small errand done,
the village store will be shuttered,
the graveyard’s monuments obscured,
the cattle housed in the barn,
along with that vulnerable cluster of pigeons,
the farm couple seated at their table.
I’m assuming, of course, at least some good fortune.