In dying most merely glance to the soil,
Fearful of what the frail sheath of their being shall become,

Yet an aged farmer,
Through his fading hours,
Hefts the weight of his end,
As though steadying a sack of hopeful seed,
Upon the threshold of heaven,
Atop the unmoving sureness of his shoulder’s perch.

His placid eyes tell tales of when he and his love,
Swayed in pastured ponds splashing wooden oars,
Shading the sun’s eager light under bonnets and wool caps,
Along swaying June foxtails and soft, shading maples.

Even through the driest years,
He stood in church choirs praising hand in hand,
A farmer, his children and his wife,
His living always in the cultivation of the earth’s skin of soil,

And there he will fall,
Becoming pieces of a cyclic tale beginning in an earthly rise,
Ending as each has fallen as one to the earth,
To color violet petals under dew-spilled dawns.

And though years brought a soul’s weariness,
To sleep beside still and departed limbs,
The hand that once tended,
Acres of envied fields sustained by loamy soil,
Becomes it.

And though death nears as an impatient, unwavering lull in all he senses,
His tranquil hand and unwavering eyes sing without libretto*,
The song of a welcomed end,
And he is led by the warm hand of serenity,
Extended to his being by the certainty that all which was once,
Sleeps in waves swaying amber and gilded by October’s twilight,
And ripe for tomorrow’s harvest.

*libretto: lyric or words of an opera or piece of music