. . . closing because younger taxpayers don't want to believe they will ever be old.

Now they sit behind the one window

Furred with frost that looks out on

The long lawn, brown grass, a few

Bare trees, the fence leaning away,

Less keeping them in than others out.

None came alone, but are alone now,

Brought here to live in the care of

Their silence, hands curled in their laps

As though holding on to some last part

Of the places they thought to never leave.

Come spring those who can will walk

The lawn like the fields they left, turn

Them over again in their remembering,

Tossing the stones of their hard stories

Over the fence, shaping their monuments,

Still making to the old ground new again.

Each year countless farms disappear because the youngest generation wants no part of farming, and the land is lost to not only future generations but to the last, who become too old to tend and protect it.  Some have nowhere to go, nowhere they would choose to go.