The Red Apple Farm Poem by Doug Lane

When the thieves
descended
on The Red Apple Farm,

our family's
Nebraska homestead,
no one was home

but ghosts.
We descendants were scattered
all over the globe.

It must have been
laughably easy
for the bandits

to chainsaw all the
huge,150 year old,
black walnut trees

lining the road
to the empty farmhouse
and drive them away
on flatbeds.

The Red Apple Farm,
which had teemed
with multiple generations

of Lanes and Webers and Smiths and Douglases
for more than a century
lay peaceful and defenseless,

only squirrels, rabbits, gophers,
and meadowlarks witness
to the roar of the blades

the crash of great trunks
the smell of saw dust,
the rape, the fresh stumps,

under the summer sun.