If I Can't be a Farmer

If I can't be a farmer;
If I don't have the words inside that only a farmer can write,
I'll write poetry about political discontent and angry diatribes over social
injustices committed against the downtrodden masses
who have no voice.
I think I can find those people.
They must be someplace. You know, those downtrodden masses.
If I forget what farming means -
The farming my parents knew and that I thought I understood
for one brief disappearing moment -
If I forget
I'll write flowery strings of adjectives about love and the beauty of nature
and trees and swans and God help me if it comes to that.
Oh man, my life has degenerated into this.
If I no longer know the technical state-of-the-art of agriculture
as it changes and evolves
I'll write about something else. I don't know what.
Maybe I'll write Zen haikus
capturing the essence of the moment in a specific number of syllables
and because they're short
I can write a whole bunch.
And it'll be easy because most people are too busy counting syllables
to notice whether I really captured the essence of anything.
Pretty sneaky, huh?
Maybe I'll write about my childhood
the way some academic poets write as if they have no other life experience,
cloistered away in their ivy halls.
I'll write whatever I want to write
if I can't be a farmer.
I'll write erotic poetry to read late at night in a little metropolitan café;
something about romance like a river ride;
out of control emotion carrying, caressing, entangling, engulfing
or whatever that stuff does.
I never had anything new to say about that sort of thing.
I should take a college class about it.
If it's all over for me with farming let's not dwell on it.
When are we going to quit beating this dead horse?
I'll ride the ghost of that horse all my life.
If it's over, it's over and let's move on,
and even if I still see everything through the same two eyes
I'll write about something else.