18 years ago was my birth..
I was born on the kitchen table..
Storm raging outside, shutters smacking
And lightning struck the tree besides the house..
Pa was so startled.. he dropped me..
And I ain’t ever been right sense.
I’d have dreams that came true..
People would tell me things and I’d know they were lying..
All kinds of stuff.. crazy I guess..
But something happened to me..
Something Special.

So I worked as best I could.. but my back hurt so
I’d work a 14 hour day and feel as if I was going to die..
I’d cough up blood working the grind mill..
But the doc said it was just the streppin cough.

So now.. I’m there and this was the summer of my innocence..
My father killed himself in a Wheat field in spring.
I herd the shot crack echo off the trees…
The smack back off the silo and the ring in the septic tank…


Mother quickly drank herself into a coma..
Drove off the rode last night…
The sheriff said she’d fell asleep..
And that I’d be in charge around here now.

So now.. Now I’m here in this empty farmhouse..
Mice and mosquitoes to keep me company..
It’s a 15 mile drive down the dirt road out to the blacktop highway..
I haven’t seen many people.. but then again.. there’s not much point..

I used to think things were ok.. I knew ma and pa would fight a lot about money..
But in this world.. money and land seems to be all you have…

Two nights after pa died, lightning struck the tree outside my window..
And the tree burned.. even tho it was pouring buckets..

I looked at the tree the next day.. and it had been split right down the middle..
A black charred mass was the center of that 300 year old oak..
We buried pa the next day… out beside that tree..
Now… now it’s grown back.. still split in the middle..
With ma right next to him…

I had a dream last night about me swinging from that tree as a child..
And then me swinging on the end of a rope… dying…
And now.. now I wonder if that’s what’s left…
I have no children.. I have no wife.. just this house. the mice and mosquitoes..
Watching the world pass me by.. 15 miles down the road..
While I just tend this farm.. and wait…
Maybe I should get a dog.

06/15/2004

Author's Note: I wrote this a couple of weeks ago as a character sketch..

Posted on 06/15/2004
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