Member Poem

I Bought the Farm
 
For sale: quaint organic vegetable and livestock farm on 100+ acres,
fully staffed with established CSA, all farm assets included,
includes water rights, large farmhouse, good condition, profitable,
affordable
 
The shepherd was a wonder
and I only lost sheep
when he was away
every full moon.
 
I never saw the man who milked the cows
before dawn and after sundown
and the boy who tended them in the field
was hard to find and had an Irish accent.
 
The chickens were tended by a man
named Urgh who was ghastly pale –
Hungarian, I think –
and lumbered uncomfortably.
 
Helga ran the CSA and mixed the compost
in a giant black cauldron that
bubbled furiously and smelled
like dead rats combined with teenage socks.
 
There was no accounting for the
accountant, though the numbers
always looked good –
I paid him in gold.

No one ever explained why
the farmhouse was a Gothic castle
and the eerie clouds never wandered far,
but it all seemed too good to be true
until…

(first published in the spring 2015 edition of Star*Line, 38.1)