The farmer was not always a farmer.

He was an athlete.

You know the kind.

Not just any athlete,

But the kind who is still mentioned

Wherever there is a gathering of men.

The state record-holding kind

Who once defined a great play.

Whose name remains a reference

 in a current game when

there comes a great hurl

and for whom someone in the crowd exclaims,

Why that looked just like ole Shooter’s pass!

The farmer was not always a farmer.

He later took to golf.

Before long,

He smoked the local crowd

And then beyond.

That son-of-a gun Shooter,

He got another hole in one.

But soon,

His love for the club,

Waned. 

The farmer was not always a farmer.

A pretty savvy mind,

He bought up town lots

From the profits of his other trade

Which in and of itself

Covered far above

The necessities of his life.

That Shooter,

That boy sure knows how to

make a buck.

Did you see the house he built

overlooking Maddie's Creek?

They say he owns a whole strip off Main. 

The farmer was not always a farmer.

But I’d only heard his name 

when I was the rival's crown. 

I never knew the boy around town.

Nor did I know the budding chap who built his fortune early,

the one who soon retreated to the woods

while I read books and polished words. 

I've since met him who once looked up

and smiled, only to

soon bend impassive. 

He wakes with the sun,

and sleeps with the dusk. 

He fills the vacancy of his home with art from his hands,

and scatters his palpable soil with loam from his thumbs.

And  in my presence

leaves a mind barren and drought. 

A farmer,

he was not always that. 

Scupper, © May, 2009