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Blog Medium Image2022-09-03T14:52:45-04:00

Planting the Flag

flag

A feller born this day
74 years ago
has a lifetime of
planting the flag!
I’ve seen him do it
time and again
courage is the backbone of leadership
and he’s got it!

School district train wreck
finances askew
teachers on the walk
somebody needs courage
plant a flag
draw a line in the sand
know how to add, subtract
understand

Pause, look down,
soil is precious
somebody needs to plant a flag
understand
we’re not doing it right
Here’s a better way!

Plant a flag, John, plant a flag!
So happy birthday,
Him Who Plants a Flag!
Well done!

Lin 2/2015
John Walter Fisher

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By |July 20th, 2015|Categories: All Poems, Loved Ones|0 Comments

Used to…

FIRST-SNOW-VI

Where horses used to run
where buggies rolled along
where people heated rocks
to warm their ice cold feet
cars and trucks now run
rubber balloon tires
springs and shock absorbers
roll across the prairie blacktops
delivering folks here and there

Engines purr where horses snorted
pulling loads with ease
comforts taken for granted
in the winter cold

“Cold” did I say?
Nine below with wind
chill to the bone quickly
but on with the heater
flowing warm air
toasting the smiling occupants

Used to be, so different
on the farm in Illinois
Prairie State, and still
broad expanses treeless

Winter sweeps the same
freezing all it can
colder
and colder
and colder still
long nights wrap us in snow and ice
while winds do their best
to chill all that are warm blooded

Amazing, the squirrels, the birds,
the animals who live out of doors
surviving, seeming oblivious
to the cold

They’re unchanged
hardy
just like always
Used to be is still here
Oh my!
How we have changed!

Lin, 9 below, 2/2015

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By |July 20th, 2015|Categories: All Poems, Seasons|0 Comments

Deep Draughts*, and The American Farmer

022-stock-footage-clouds-passing-through-newly-planted-corn-field

Crop Management Conference
they labeled it
The rest of the story is
it’s all about farming
Year of Our Lord
2015

A baker’s dozen of Ph.Ds
sharing hearts and souls
with a hundred fifty farmers
and their supporters

The very best
from one of the very best
lecturing and answering questions
Getting their minds and arms
around the issues that drive us

Dollars and sense and marketing
cover crops and all things agronomy
Inputs and insects
diseases and herbicides
Best Management Practices
spelled out, numbered out
weather and soil

Ah, soil.
We definitely don’t call it…
Dirt.
Soil. We respect it.
Live with it. Sleep with it.
Study it six ways from Sunday!

One conference down
two days, thirteen hours engaged
with more to come
Two days on government
rules and regulations
laws and lawyers and courts

Legislators and bureaucrats engaging
back and forth with ideas
where we are
where we want and need to go
and how we might get there

Behind the meetings
preparing for planting
Machinery repaired and tuned
seeds and supplies filling sheds
At the ready for the coming day
Charge!

The deep, deep draughts* of farming
Like a cool drink after baling hay
all day

Information flows like rivers
from labs and test plots to the farmers
Oh, how they drink all winter!
Researchers anxious to share
audiences eager to learn
year after year after year!

Always in discovery mode
Study the problem
Figure it out! (I love that part!)
Try it out for the better
More efficient
More productive
No turning back!
The brew that is true!

Lin 2/2015
* 37 definitions of the word! I like ‘something that is taken in by drinking or inhaling’

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By |July 20th, 2015|Categories: All Poems, Seasons|0 Comments

Boards from Parkville

jan-sun-farmyard

Winter evenings on the farm
Find me settled in
Family room, they call it
And indeed it is
5 red sweatered kids
Pictured above the fireplace
Me in my recliner
Good light, good book, warm fire

The walls are aged red barn boards
Hauled here by horse
A hundred years ago
The Parkville sawmill fed our farm
House and barn and out buildings all
With materials to last a lifetime
And two
And three
Now four, generations.

From 1898 to 1972
The barn stood strong and true
Setting on big boulders
Its beams endured the winds and rains
The giant mow held hay
The south side a milking parlour
The northside winter comfort
For pigs and cows and us

Out there me n grandpa
Started our day right early
Three thirty we were up
Coal oil lanterns in our hands
We hung them on the wall
And started milking cows.

Fast forward thirty years
No cows. No pigs. No horses.
The barn came down but
We saved the boards from Parkville.
They line the walls in the family room
Soft barn red, weathered,
A touch of gray like me
They wrap the family with history

Horse drawn, barn service
They hold family pictures
And seasonal decor
Still shielding the family
Still serving

Selah Lin January 2015

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By |July 20th, 2015|Categories: All Poems, Seasons|0 Comments

Grinding Cold

blizzard1_300x169

The calendar grinds along
sifting winter’s cold
adding sun minutes here and there
stretching daylight hours

Cold toes and fingers
stiff but not with age
grasp the icy handles
buckets and shovels and my little stool
and I park next to Bessie

Her milk plays its notes
striking, ringing the cold metal
as the cats, lined up, sit watching
waiting for a shot of breakfast

Now and then I squirt the cats
and they spring to action, licking
oh, so happy for fresh warm milk

Winter crawls along
freezing what it can
the earth, rock hard,
is waiting, not complaining

We grind feed for stock
throw down hay from the mow
head back to the house for breakfast

Shedding frozen clothes
the coal stoker toasts us quickly
the giant iron creature roars
heating the house and us

Winter is so wearing, so long
we wonder when, if ever
the birds will sing, the grass will grow
Hold on! hold on!

Lin, mid February, 2015
childhood on the farm

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By |July 20th, 2015|Categories: All Poems, Seasons|0 Comments

Bindings

Bible

Books are bound together
warp and woof of words and pages
fibers woven into threads and strings
woods woven into threads and chapters
Front cover, back cover,
bound and determined to state
the notions and ideas of humankind
It’s those bindings that get them shared
Not one reader or two, but hundreds
and thousands and sometimes a million
or more

Consider the Christian Bible
words and pages of people stories
bound together by the idea
that there is a god
One God, holy
the binding for all mankind

So the creation of fibers
of threads and strings
that will not be broken
In the beginning and the now story
and an ending, somewhere
out there

We each one need our bindings
knowing someone cares
we spend our lives learning
how much
our pages are laid
one upon the next
tiny book, large book, a volume
created and creating
so in need of bindings

Welcome to The Book
history of the ages
words of wisdom, enduring
for all time
your time
my time
tomorrow’s time too

Page by page as our book is built
We need to seek those enduring pages
the bindings that can keep us strong, intact,
and give us meaning

Lin 2/2015

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By |July 20th, 2015|Categories: All Poems, Heaven & Earth|0 Comments

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