ELEGY Poem: HOMESTEAD REFLECTIONS, by Duane L Herrmann

I. Prairie Roots

Vast sky above, blue;
sea all around, green
waves of grass under wind,
the grown man stood
thinking of decades gone
when he was young
and another man who
stood here too.
Both linked by more
than one can say:
love and genes;
one paved the way
for generations
of the other’s life.
Immigrant here
and great grandson
on the same spot
of prairie land and love.

II. Challenge to….

A tiny house stands
old, weathered, abandoned
now – only evidence of life
and hope once here,
but life, and weather,
proved too hard.
The boast that trees
would bring rain
was not true.
Thousands of trees died trying.
Farmers moved on
to find rain
and new hopes
again and again.
Only a few could prosper
and stayed, but not farming.
We left
but for other reasons.

III Invisible Connections

The grandfather stood
where his great grandfather once
claimed land
over a century before,
though not a typical prairie tract
but on the edge
of a large shallow lake,
often dry.
The man cried,
the first to return
in all that time, but
now another link
to that man who
was special buddy
in his earliest years –
leaving behind his name,
his genes, and love
for his mother tongue.

IV. Fulfillment

Five years their lives
overlapped and
were part and time
with one another –
then loss came:
separation
for a life, but
memory remained:
the man, his words
and hometown far,
far away, where family
remained, and one day
there was reunion.
Grown boy found
familie heimstadt,
Reckendorf, Bayern,
and wept with joy
in longed for union.