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George Lewis Avery

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Yes, I feel the winds of change and though I button my jacket up close to my chin, still I feel it's chill deep in my bones.

It was blowing as the dinosaur crawled from the primordial ooze and I shudder, did he face it head on or turn and let it ride on his shoulders until it had swept him up in a maelstrom of dust and legend?

"Ah, Ozymandias, ye were blind to the sand that stung your eye. I wonder, if you had known would you still have tried?"

From Plymouth Rock, onward, and westward it has altered all in its wake: the bison; the native tribes; the forests of green; and even the heavens where the eagles roam.

It has always blown, but not since it swept the passenger pigeon into oblivion has it been felt with such force as it is today blowing past the American farm.

It would be nice to sojourn now
though time is passing by
to lean against this tilted plow
afix a thoughtful eye
on dusty roads, midafternoon,
bare heels in the sand
and forays 'neath the halo'd moon
before I was a man

those countless times I'd lie at night
hearing Chuck-Will's-Widow cry
watching shadows dance 'neath pale moonlight
hearing the winds in the willows sigh
and the frogs in the millpond spring to life
long after sleep had dimmed my eye

I have faintly felt of hungers teeth
I've courted winter's cold
I've carted home in bundled arm
the newborn winter's foal
the frozen ground I've walked upon
with Jack Frost on the scene
to make a hurried call upon
the little house on the green

though seasons change as embers die
and trails fade or divide
I've greeted all the days gone by
with my eyes open wide
A well toned hinge may gather rust
A needle might lose it's eye
A spring may fail and forfeit trust
but I'll not lie down and die

I'll get my tractor from out the shed
I'll turn my cows out on the sod
I'll see that my dog gets proper fed
Then I'll beeline it straight for God

I am not one to lament my lot
though I be the last Mohican
the world, it changed and I did not
"Will you miss me when I'm gone?"

.oeg ©