Grief Farm Poems

Miner's Dream

Somewhere in this truck-bed sand there is meaning
There are answers
Humor
Hope
A hand
Up

Somewhere in this earth's marrow I will find a meadow
Surrounded by old trees
And new...

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Its skeletal bones bare
Eyes still stare 
All that remains is the soul
A drift as a shadow lingers there
A bare bulb blares
sways absently silently 
in the...

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Betsy is “just a cow” most would say. She’s dark rust, almost auburn in color, with large white patches all over her body and especially...

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Looking back, one thing comes clean-glass clear
you were always there for me subduing every fear.

I tried to do my duty, be a husband strong and...

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rooster sounding off                      ...

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To a Mouse
by Robert Burns
translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sleek, tiny, timorous, cowering beast,
Why’s such panic in your breast?
Why dash away, so quick, so rash,
In a...

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Myth, after Dylan Thomas
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of...

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...For a year they lived and were not bothered,
began to question what it was they’d heard,
but one careless night, though the love was sublime,
Miriam got...

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Miriam Colrick and her husband Brad,
tired of dank cities, crumbling and bad,
moved to New Hampshire, bought themselves a farm,
a place they could raise children without...

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A new day begins
As the day before.
The Jersey girls assemble themselves
Into their usual cow chain.
One girl’s head follows another’s tail.
Then head then tail,
All along the...

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Poor Thomas Turkey,
Alone in his pen.
Sits solemn and scared,
For they 'did in' his hen.
 
They took her off Sunday,
Then snuffed out her life.
And now he's...

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A thorough yield
On a farm field of far east
It took me time to realize
How far I am to my far east of coast

Call of my...

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These are her stories of why; the sad excuses of mother's life;
Her oft-honed chip, accented with her mother's old mink stole,
Tears most lovely in her...

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