Who Will Feed the Masses?

This weeks poets and assignment was very difficult for me. I couldn't really identify with any one of the chosen poets. Their styles really made me reach for something to attempt to be inspired. I finally chose Robert Frost as my poet for the week. After reading his poems, I felt that I might try to attempt his ambiguity, although I don't feel that I captured his essence at all.

This piece is a saga about the disappearing of an American icon and its former values.........

Disappearing into oblivion,
yet, it still remains in plain sight.
The metamorphosis is
devastating, and cannot be put right.
The family farm that has stood
for generations as a symbol to us
of America is vanishing at an alarming rate
and becoming neighborhoods.
Where once there thrived luscious green
cropland, now there stands a discount
shopping mall; turning once productive
fields and pastures into rows of
harsh concrete urban sprawl.

My grandfather farmed the land
as did his father before him
and his grandfather and great-grandfather
and many more great, great generations.
They labored with their hands.
The sweat of worn brows glistened
in the late afternoon sun.
It was honest work, but more
than that, it was a way of life.
One that seems now done.

Life on the family farm was self-sustaining;
for there was grown the grain
that fed the animals that grew and
fed the workers
so the recycling process could begin again.
An efficient machine. It oiled the economy
and nurtured the family.
Its values prospered and it became the backbone of
our nation. A nation now in danger
of losing its spinal cord due to atrophy.


Are we reaping what we have sown?
No more land is being made.
Principles are waning.
When farming is gone who will feed the masses?