The Farmer's Awakening

[heslopian]

The lonely farmer got to work the day his mother died;
he pitied no man's tortured soul, nor sat around and cried.
Much to do and God to serve, his motto everyday,
no time no time to sit and cry and cry my life away.

His mother was a fearsome doe,
frail as life in the womb,
but with a voice that broke manhood
and sauntered on its tomb.

"Don't let me see you touch the drapes"
she'd say on long Sundays,
then if he did, she'd grab the rod
and really make him pay.

"Thank our Lord before you sleep"
was something else she said,
"because he'll come here in the night
to strop your black soul dead."

She was a very old woman
in more ways than just age,
and to her kin he owed his life
as manly, pure and sage.

So when she died the house was dark
and all the chairs were bleak,
the walls would peel, the curtains sag,
the floors grew slightly weak.

It needed now a woman's touch,
a pair of hands to grace the shades,
strong women with sprightly flesh,
not widows or old maids.

He met them in the local church,
or at the roadside bar,
and some would deign to follow him
to see his lonely farm.

Now the curtains never sag,
the walls have stopped peeling,
he's even had skin left over
to hide cracks in the ceiling.