The Ghost of the Hungry Farmer

The Ghost of the Hungry Farmer

The summer of the barren draught, brought suffering for all around.

The farmer’s tears the only water, crying for his only daughter.

Whom he can’t feed, whom he can’t feed.

The hungry farmer prayed for days, watching the people waste away.

He would give up anything, for even just a little rain.

To plant a seed, this he would plead.

In the wind he called the storm, the sky got gray- the breeze was warm.

Take anything that I own he cried! As the people starved and died.

So he prayed. Until that day.

He saw the storm clouds drawing near, his answered prayers, his only fear.

For this rain what is the barter? He could not find his only daughter.

The wind would howl. Can’t trade back now.

Once empty fields now flourished plains. Only he knew the cost of grain.

Underneath the food he’d grown, were seeds of evil he must sew.

With a haunted plow, a haunted plow.  

The people said we are the “blessed of men”…and “fairer days are here again…”

Their belly’s fat from the ample crop, they bragged on how the rain won’t stop!

“No end in sight”, ... and they were right.

Where once was dust now bottomless mud. The withered levee gone to flood.

Water for miles takes the corn from the land. Even the scarecrows all have drown.

Angry rain falls day and night, no end in sight.

Blood on the harvest, ghost in the grain.

His only daughter, the price for rain.

Even the sparrow won’t eat from the land,

The farmer plowed with blood stained hands.

But through the thunder you hear the farmer,

Drowning in tears cried from his daughter.

The autumn of the dreadful rain,

That perished a town, never quite the same.

By Missy Shackelford (c) 2014