Reflections - Auction Day: A Poem

As is often my practice, I write to make sense of what’s happening around me, so I’ll let this poem speak for me today.

Auction Day

Watching from a distance

your life sold off in pieces.

Listening to the tinny, sing-song sound

of the auctioneer,

the banshee yell as buyers bid.

Breathing in the scent of smoked meats

wafting through Harke land.

People crowding, milling, looking,

touching, prodding—

The spectacle of it all. . .

And yet it must be.

Wagons to hold someone else’s harvest.

Discs to work other fields.

Tractors given new homes.

Your pickup with a new driver.

Surely you were more than your trade tools, Farmer Cousin.

Life-long neighbor—at least I thought you’d always be.

We grew up together playing farm in Grandma’s yard,

’til we grew up and played farm for real.

Living life in plain sight of the other.

Connected by history and hand waves.

And when your heart failed you that day,

not far from spring planting,

Jesus reached down His hand and pulled you up.

Up to a place with golden fields,

where corn stretches high into kindly skies,

where worm and weed never take away.

And every harvest is a bountiful one.

Related posts:

Hands: A Tribute

Posts appearing one year ago this week:

Finding my Pace: Slowing Down to Enjoy Life