When the thieves
descended
on The Red Apple Farm,
our family's
Nebraska homestead,
no one was home
but ghosts.
We descendants were scattered
all over the globe.
It must have been
laughably easy
for the bandits
to chainsaw all the
huge,150 year old,
black walnut trees
lining the road
to the empty farmhouse
and drive them away
on flatbeds.
The Red Apple Farm,
which had teemed
with multiple generations
of Lanes and Webers and Smiths and Douglases
for more than a century
lay peaceful and defenseless,
only squirrels, rabbits, gophers,
and meadowlarks witness
to the roar of the blades
the crash of great trunks
the smell of saw dust,
the rape, the fresh stumps,
under the summer sun.
No. No. No. Tell me this is fiction. This is unbelievably ugly. I cannot wrap my head around something like this- for one thing, that was a lot of work... presumably in broad daylight... for the sake of purposeless destruction... for firewood? . I don't know why I am shocked- people murder other people, people rape other people, people rape children, people rape the land of its resources...
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Extremely well-written. You kept your anger on a leash and let your readers stir up their own horrified anger. Terse, straight-forward, excellent details... 10+++++++++++