My colors fade to gray.
Vines & weeds gently press
what’s left of me down.
I’m nearly hidden by overgrown trees
that guard the straggling creek.
The farm has turned to streets,
houses, and concrete.

Children who play inside me
were secretly conceived in my soft
hay-bed lofts, rafters exposed,
silver moonlight swimming in drops
of sweat lingering in the secret scent
of manure-moist loam and oil
from the still-warm Farmall,
red and tractor-fresh
from now-fallow
fields.

Now someone pauses
his colors fade to gray.
With the blur of traffic behind him
he sees me through the shadows of branches,
smiles
and writes something down.

We whisper, the poet and I.