The Land Poem by Frank Avon

The land I sprang from
lies fallow now.

Rolling fields where once crops grew -
wheat, oats, and corn, rye and barley,
red clover, alfalfa, lespedeza -
now grow weeds taller than your head,
underbrush, young hackberries and hedgeapples.
Paths have eroded or been invaded by vines.
Fence rows and ditches are blanketed
with alien kudzu or Asian honeysuckle.

Roads that were once gravel
are paved now.
Where do they go?
To other paved roads.

Farmhouses are abandoned,
the doors open to strangers,
windows broken, steps dangerous,
walls and floors bare,
weathered, beginning to decay.

But the hills are still green and glossy,
the creeks clear and sparkling,
the pastures spread with wildfloWers,
blackberry vines rampant,
shade trees here and there.

The wealthy hoard the land
as if it were mitred gold.
One farm I lived on and its neighbor,
where the Lyles lived
with their umpteen kids,
recently sold for a cool $2 million.

On the winding road down the hill
to Shepherd's Branch,
now paved and scenic,
stand here and there
elegant, secluded vacation homes
for the affluent from distant cities,
overseen and tended by the offspring
of the illiterate backwoodsmen
who once lived there in penury.

Where country churches
and one-room schools once stood
rocky clearings have no signs
of their former edifices.
The country store is ramshackle,
a heap of rusty iron and rotting wood.
The mill across the road,
where our wheat and corn
were ground into flour and meal,
is there no more.

And the land -
the land all around,
the land I sprang from -
desecrated, not hallowed,
lies fallow now.