Farmer Couple

When the turkey farmers doff mud
soaked galoshes and tiredly push through
the injured screen door’s
strident squeaking,
a plethora of penumbras couldn’t darken
the old kitchen table laden thick
with lumpy green melons
and squishy gizzards
smelling quite bitter,
looking not
much better,
in the failing
dimming
Autumn light.

Old Mr. Hansen called to his missus,
“give me a drink from the frig real fast”.
She rose up quick on her creaky knees,
poured him a tall one from the top metal shelf.
His crooked smile met
the cold beer foam lace
while she re-tied her apron
and denied herself.

This ancient couple had built a life
of ignoring,
solely traversing stone
roads of silence,
working always and only
to tend their damn gobblers.

In this, their final chapter, had begun to falter.
The children they’d sired all moved to town.
Lonely times weighed big now,
cold heavy nights slowly pulled down.
She often dreamt of choking on salt water,
waking up gasping as if to drown.

He knew her not in her true honest ways.
Sixty years of marriage,
many seasons of history,
the birth of four children,
still neither seeing the other
in Autumns’ failing rays.