Monday, July 30, 2012

The Drought of 2012

                                    

     
   
Just one more parched and stunted field,
With the corn forlorn and reduced in yield,
Lower leaves  baked to a wheat-straw gold,
Yet the crop, though failed, is already sold.
Without asking the farmer, we can take it for granted,
That his crop was all sold before it was planted.
The size of the harvest, no person can know. 
Yet he’s bound to deliver what he guessed he could grow.

And the money now spent, (who knows where it went?)
For the combine they’ll deliver in mid-September?
Why he thought it was needed, he can’t remember.
Machines to cut corn that will never exist
Would not be on top of today’s shopping list,
But when it was ordered, it seemed like a plan;
Not a gold plated comb for a bald headed man.

This has happened before, or so I’ve been told.
But you wouldn’t remember, unless you’re quite old.
No quicker a way to lose a man’s shirt
Than squeezing the gold out of Iowa dirt.
To survive, it takes guts, and brains, and endurance;
And also---some government crop insurance.

                                                 The Cat



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