The Farmer

The picture,1934. A dirty bib-overalled farmer stands hat in hand, weeping, gazing out over the dried up field. The crops are burnt into oblivion, along with his hopes, his future, his life. Salt-lined tears fall, from his soul to his soil, this the only moisture the earth has known in months, is vaporized into the wind as quickly, as surely, and as completely as his defeated dreams. I stare intensely at this picture hanging in a dim corner of an old museum. I'm overcome with a deep sense of melancholy. It's been 80 years now, yet in this picture it is still happening, always shall happen, always has happened. What became of him? Of the unpainted old house blurred in the background? Of the shoeless, thin-clothed family barely holding on within it? ... perhaps like the house, they also were simply in the long process of fading away... I feel certain that if I could somehow find that precise field, and walk to the exact spot where that farmer in this picture forever stands, I could there bend low, kiss his shadow lingering upon the ground, and still taste the salt of all the endless, ageless tears he has spilt over, and into, the land.