Salt Of The Earth
The sun bears down in full force
it radiates and penetrates
the sore limbs of sunburned men
who labor in the fields
sweat pours from their brows
the work exhausting
as hunched men pick the harvest
when the work is done
they will find some shade
and recover from the blazing sun
the farm's crop is in
and the farm settles in to a slower pace
awaiting the next season
hard physical work still exists
but only for a few
most work at desks or at computers
and never think about
the hot sweaty labor
that still goes on
the labor most will not do
that has long been bred out of them
and who will never know
the satisfaction of sweat
or the feel of dirt between their fingers
one day a robot will pick the crops
by then we will have lost our last tie
to the land
and we will no longer know
the gratification of physical labor
no more songs will be sung
among those who swung the scythe
or filled the sack
as they followed the row
toward the setting sun
long gone will be
those honest earnest people
our ancestors
salt of the earth.
jennifer Malden
Sun 5th Jul 2020 14:49
Can't keep up with your output DK!. Really liked this one, much more serious than your usual very funny poems. Really brings back times when agricultural workers worked the fields with 'hot sweaty labour'.In Scotland prob not so hot, but still tough. Here they have programmes taking primary school kids to visit farms, cos most of them now think that food originates in the supermarket. Perhaps better they don't see some of the horrors of intensive animal/bird rearing. In Scotland we had the 'tatty holidays' in the autumn when the kids had no school for about two weeks in autumn so the whole family could go and pick potatoes. In Italy a lot of people have olive groves, but the young are only free to help pick at the weekend, so the older generation do a lot of the picking. The orthopaedic ward is at its busiest, as so many fall off ladders!
Jennifer