I should have given this preface when I posted this earlier, but, this is the house that I grew up in. It was built by my grandfather, I”m guessing in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. There, he and my grandmother raised nine children, my mother, and my aunts and uncles. When I grew up there, the house was surrounded by mature trees with thick pine groves on the north and west that served as wind breaks. There was an apple orchard and grape vines and a huge garden. The place was always alive with cows, hogs, chickens, horses, and visitors who drank beer and lemonade on the once broad front porch. Now, only three or four trees and a few of the old farm buildings still remain. Deserted, it stands as a stark monument to what once was, as does so much of our modern life which finds the old ways, old things, old times, something to be disposed of, destroyed, and forgotten. The darkening sky portrayed my feelings at seeing my childhood home, now most likely close to being knocked down and buried as is so much of our history, so as to gain another few acres to be farmed with environment destroying herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers, this all by complements of the corporate moguls: Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson and all the other corporate rulers of industrial farming, farming that now poisons the land and water, all in order to produce toxic food for the masses.

Deserted it stands
against a darkening sky.
All love now long gone.