The Brown Farm – Poetry by Ron Scully

Flyover country
bored with itself
fades to brown.
Nobody cares.

The sky, overcast
loses interest in
its listless expanse.
Neither here nor there.

Slate gray transport
seems headed west,
absent a flight plan,
matter of factly.

Troops daydream
disinterested,
nod against the portals,
nobody looks down.

The captain neglects
to announce highpoints
of the nameless farm.|
Makes no difference.

From the ground up
barren trees scratch
the pasty sky,
thirst for a snowflake
weightlessly,
clear as a cowbell,
seed the fecund ground.

Must be midwinter drought.
Between no snow cover
before and none in sight,
end to end, the land succumbs
to the dominion of browns.

Outbuildings, separately
are sad shades of each other,
faded,
overworked and let down.

The pale cracker barrel silo
stands apart, stores
of cracked seed turn
to seed, no wind sewn.

The upstate tired barn
once a country burnt umber
aged to liver spot browns.
Out of season, year round.

The far workhouse and
foreground doublewide
have been baked, and dried
to a lifeless desert sands.

The ten year tax return
was meant to touch up
the lackluster wash
with something two-tone: perhaps
caramel, accented by suede.
And a feel good plant.
Check never arrived.

The creek has overgrown.
The smell of stones
dried in place where absence
had somewhere to drain.

The livestock is sparsest.
No mud to get down.
Not the touch of green.
No dewdrop to nosh.
No wind to swat. No shade.
The farm’s grown browns.

Two polled Herefords
hanging out, nonplussed,
milked for all their worth,
threadbare corduroy hide
lift their moonpie eyes,
dream delegates
to the electoral college.

And lastly, the lonely sheep.
Dirty bored brown. Snowbrown.
Alone, one sheep one vote.
There’s no plural for sheep.
Going about his business
works, with his head down.

---

About the Poet

Ron Scully is a retired bookseller. After 25 years on the road, a real life Willie Loman only funnier, he has settled in the NH foothills to refashion his field sales reports into an Odyssey, a crown of sonnets, or a haiku or two, whichever comes first. He has been feverishly publishing in Japanese short form journals and miscellaneous literary journals, after nearly a forty year submission hiatus. He is scheduled to publish two chapbooks; Darlington Braves from Red Bird and Listening for Thirteen Blackbirds from bottle rocket, both before 2020 runs out. He is also working on a play and an anthology of sports literature.

For the first time in nearly five years, Vita Brevis is closed for submission. Read the full story here.