Farmer's Son (Huntington, 1955)

He loved the smell of the barn
and of cut hay drying,
loved the look of a newly turned field,
but he hated farming.
He turned his back on the plow.
Still the fields lie fallow.

He was not a cruel man,
but in anger could do cruel things.
He tried in silence to love me.
He did not trust hands,
having seen what his father's had done
to horses.
It had made him cry.

Only once in his life did he hit me.
I flew like flint
and lay in the fireplace like a log.
He could never hug.
He burned the red barn down forever
when he shot my dog.