Lost Lives

Six weeks back I took a road trip to South Dakota, my home state. It's a lonely drive across the flat prairies of southern Minnesota with only scattered farmhouses, outbuildings, and the occasional tractor, plowing a field, to keep me company.

Most of the homesteads contained the spark of busy lives. But some appeared broken down and deserted, causing me to speculate on their fate.



Lost Lives


My eye catches a cluster of farm buildings
abandoned and weathered grey
on a vast stretch of open fields.

Who delighted in calling this place home?
Was the cropland rich, the rain plentiful,
or the soil meager and the sky stingy?
Who butchered the hogs, plucked the chickens,
stewed wild rhubarb for cobbler in spring?
Did a school bus battered by gravel stop
at the drive, scaring the barnyard cats?
How many years were the yields good
before the books, branded by overdue bills,
dried up like drought?
Did neighbors shift their feet, mumble bids
at a foreclosure auction?
Or was the land productive, sold at a price
too good to pass up, structures no longer needed?
When did the windows first gape in collapse,
and do frugal buildings implode more quickly?
Will later generations dig deeper, or remain
content with stories passed down?

Close by, a grove of gnarled trees huddles
to protect a fading house, some sheds from blizzards,
still blasting out of Canada come winter.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor