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Richard Wilhelm is a founding member of Somerville’s Ibbetson Street Press. A longtime resident of our city, he paints prolifically in his spare time.

Richard Wilhelm.

AN AMERICAN SCENE

The animals, tractor, plow and tools have been auctioned off.
Now, as the last of the furniture is humped from the house,
the tired patriarch, concealing his tears, feigns a cough.
Nothing left but yellowed curtains and an un-trapped mouse.
The old man tossed out the traps as they readied to go.
“Let the mouse live. I grant him right of domain.”
Behind rusted barbed wire, a tattered scarecrow
leans into a desolate field in November rain
as if to listen to the half-cry of ghosts on the failed farm.
Where in summer the unknowing crickets sang as human hearts sank,
bankers, lawyers, contractors see no harm,
await the bulldozers, cheap construction, money in the bank.

— Richard Wilhelm

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To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu