Morning Has Broken on Dad’s Farm

By Thomas Fullmer

Smell of damp earth

fills my nostrils as
I step sleepily into the mud,
leaving jagged tread
of my black irrigation boots
smooshing the cool wet mud
with my hundred-pound weight plus ten

Water trickles between the reddish-brown clumps of dirt

that partially obstruct each straight-laced furrow,
skirting pebbles and clods,
finding its most natural course down
the imperfectly straight rows
soaking the dry, sandy loam soil
with its life-giving nutrients.

Small green barley shoots break through soil.

While beneath, roots penetrate the porous earth.
Shoots reach their delicate green heads upward
to greet warmth of dawn’s rising sun.

My shovel clears a clump of salt grass and tumbleweed

that blocks the ditch.
The obstruction causes flow to foam slightly
to spread out unnaturally as if it has tentacles
that seek to gobble up parched earth..

The mountain water,

like an unruly teenager,
 has rebelled;
left its course,
cut deep into soil
by the steel teeth of man’s plow,
gingerly, I bring flow back into check
and send it scurrying down the ditch.

Meadow lark warbles its greeting

on far-off fence, filling the air with
melodious song.
A grayish-brown squirrel peaks
from behind sagebrush momentarily,
then scurries off into underbrush.

Miles away, mist rises from riverbed

and drifts lazily across checkerboard fields below
the rise of earth that is Dad’s farm.
Farm ascends steeply
toward rock-strewn western hills.

Across the valley, on faraway blue-green mountains,

first rays of sun reach bright, cheery tendrils
through dips and hollows and over peaks.
I am filled with a sense of peace and purpose.

In the heat of midday, and Dad’s temper,

there will be no greater hell.
But here, all alone with my emotions,
I am in heaven, and there can be no hell.

In all the world, there is no place

So full of beauty, charm and grace
 than is Dad’s farm in his absence.

There is no age so sweet,

nor memory so dear as that moment
etched on the fabric of my mind
like a furrow cut deep into dry earth
of my sixteenth year.

The joy of life radiates within,

untarnished by worries and cares,
amidst the eye of the storm
that is my tumultuous life.

This memory resonates deep within me,

leaving its imprint on my psyche
like a rubber boot in wet mud
of Dad’s fifty-acre farm.