The Farmer Poem by Martin Lochner

Eternity surrounds the ancestral porch
where he sat chewing memories
framed and existing with strict eyes

only moving with the rays of the sun,
a khaki lizard with pipe tobacco
fingering nostril sniff, mint eyes staring
into the mirage

“50 years I fought this ridgeback dog of a soil”
cutting through his back, grinding his spine of boulders

a cart load of grain came past us
the donkey moaned - he said
“toil is in our blood”