You can get in my way,
you can cut me down,
you can steal from me,
you slander my reputation,
you can build an army against me,
you can make my life hard.... but

I still reach for the sun,
because that is better than
​wallowing in your shadow.

and so sustained
where once life
creeking sounds remain
as hard nails steadfast nestled
begin to weaken
like old photographer's knees
or the mind of a surgeon
​lost to crosswords and shaky pen.

The same folk who drank the milk
from cows once attended to,
who ate the hay stored in loft
and old men leaned on tractors
solving the problems of the country
as their bones began to creek
as hard cartilage steadfast holding
but weakening with each grunted step.

The skeleton remind's of a time
lost, but perhaps it is the reminder
of the death of progress,
of abandonment and scars
of the driving force of dreaded
children's hopes moving away,
Of culled sharp swear words echoing
in what is left in the silo.

Though beauty is found still in
the carved names of young love
in the rafters in the basement, that love too,
likely long gone in a grand-parents stone
in a field somewhere nearby, though once
acknowledged, perpetrated on the family
​it never goes completely away.