THE OLD FARMERS PRAYER

Time just keeps moving on

Many years have come and gone

But I grow older without regret

My hopes are in what may come yet.

On the farm I work each day

This is where I wish to stay

I watch the seeds each season sprout

From the soil as the plants rise out.

I study Nature and I learn

To know the earth and feel her turn

I love her dearly and all the seasons

For I have learned her secret reasons.

All that will live is in the bosom of Earth

She is the loving mother of all birth

But all that lives must pass away

And go back again to her someday.

My life too will pass from Earth

But do not grieve, I say, there will be other birth

When my body is old and all spent

And my soul to Heaven has went.

Please compost and spread me on this plain

So my body Mother Earth can claim

That is where I wish to be

Then Nature can nourish new life with me.

So do not for me grieve and weep

I did not leave, I only sleep

I am with the soil here below

Where I can nourish life of beauty and glow.

Here I can help the falling rain

Grow golden fields of ripening grain

From here I can join the winds that blow

And meet the softly falling snow.

Here I can help the sun’s warming light

Grow food for birds of gliding flight

I can be in the beautiful flowers of spring

And in every other lovely thing.

So do not for me weep and cry

     I am here, I do not die.