melissaahowells


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No Shoes On

It all started with the chickens
that would no longer lay.
Their eggs hiding way up inside their
feathered bodies
no longer willing to come out
to fill their roosts with bounty.
Soon the fields of corn began to wilt
sered in the unending heat of the day.
The skies unfilled with rain
for weeks on end.
Next the cows would give no milk.
The vegetable garden a
graveyard of pale green skeletons.
The old farmer who had depended so much
on his faith began to doubt
and shunned his wife, children,
and the weekly sermon.
His patience and good luck
running like twin sieves between his dirty calloused hands.
Hunger came to be their newest
daily pestilence.
Hunger for rain, hunger for
poor dumb luck, hunger for a
once familiar abiding faith.
With the flying black whirls
of dust came the banker to his front door.
And in his smooth hands, the banker held the deed
to the house, the  rights to his land and the farmer's will.
Years later when the old house and barn were razed,
a curious thing was discovered:
Inside the walls of every room
were pairs of worn shoes of every size.
Little and large soles embedded within
the very walls of the old humbled farmer's
homestead.
Soles to keep the evil out.
Soles to bring the harvest back.
Soles to keep the wrath of God from trampling
the old farmer's life and livelihood out.
A fine dark demon silt coated every shoe
and filled the walls and sifted out
as the trembling walls were razed.
They had left the homestead in their bare feet,
taking with them only themselves.
Not even the knowledge of being saved.
Their souls planted back there in the walls while
they moved on hollowed out into their next
wilderness,
shuffling lost Pilgrims,
the old farmer dying eventually purposeless,
superstitions having lead him on
his long last way.


Copyright March 13, 2012 All Rights Reserved By the Author
Melissa A Howells. Meloo of Tilt-a-World







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