THE LONELY MEN
Their little dark houses still dotted the prairie
when I was growing up
They all seemed to cling to the soil as if their
life force had all been used up in the long and
difficult transplanting, and they could hang on
but no longer grow
Or they stood alone and surrounded by sadness
and the small and smaller markers of what had
fallen to the reaper’s scythe
Their roots, loosened year after year
by the hot winds and the deep frosts
became more and more brittle
Until one by one they broke off
like tumbleweeds
and were gone