Green prickly acrid humidity,

Valley rolling north leaning on the Seven Hills, 

Old growth standing ground

guarding oaks, hovering maples

a money exchange with Chief Uncas, to be born into owned-land,

West Farms, turned to Franklin, in honor of Benjamin, 

agriculture digging in, 

to farm

Small Yankee ingenuity, push/pulling brown grainy wagon wheels, rocky roads, deformed 

Collinsville pickaxe pecking the loosening ground,

trees clearcut-to-brown lush soil, 

uncovering blackberry spotty sticky meeting places, next to the creeks,

tranquility, of the times… 

fragrant cows herds leading, 

symbiotic cycles, new ideas. 

Flattening, motorized change turning wheels,

Rt 32, Willimantic, 

snaking North to the guarding Bridge Frogs, over the river.  

Coiled black scaly tar leading, tractors, trucks, cars travel, 

the change was constant, from ox and plow, 

telegraphing an intrepid balance of tightening profits, 

resources, limited, 

rocking like an emptied chair, 

pushed by wind, creaking,

from the Sound

Emergent 80s farming, big hair, mushrooms, prosperity, 

reality of a constricted forbidden growth, 

nascent choke hold of modernism, cutting off the flow, like a asymptomatic stroke 

energy needs, slowing down the heartbeat of, 

the farm,

“to grow, we need more…”

Coiled needs, gripping, 

beginning hopes of prosperity,

by the throat,

constricting, 

energy vanquished,

out of breath, 

distribution supply chains, disrupted,

dangling green communities, 

calloused hands, stressed minds,

we reach, stretching past our hopeful abilities, 

growing thin brown,

retrain, re-vector, retry… Goodbye. 

Franklins’ sustainable fulcrum, built on a impossible soiled start, 

generational land knowledge,

lost amid the noise,

broken loans, opioids, morbidity, jacked interest rates, grain embargoes, 

Black Tuesday market crashes 

Mushroom farm toddling down away from its birth, 

closer to a suckling teat, down further south in PA,

away from the slow choke-hold of this isolated modernism, 

for rebirth.

GMC winding down, 

my hazel eyes on the Old Sign… 

like a forgotten harvesting,

driving through the Seven hills, 

history presses against my windshield, 

meaningful beckoning…  

tractors, tractors everywhere, 

but,

nowhere to plow

(c) Owen McCusker 2020