DADDY FED THE WORLD
Copyright ©
Susan Werner
Description: Guitar
Before it's all forgotten
And faded from the page
Before it's all discarded
In the Information Age
There's a story I remember
From when I was a girl
And Mom she fed the family
And Daddy fed the world
His hair was black as oil
And his arms were always tan
He threw the hay into the wagons
Three bales with each hand
And he drove us to town on Sundays
With his ten strong fingers curled
Confidently around the wheel
When Daddy fed the world
And he rode home in the evenings
On giant steel machines
That cut the grain, the teacher said
They needed overseas
And we said the pledge of allegiance
As the schoolyard flag unfurled
We were one big nation under God
Where Daddy fed the world
And a plane from National Geographic came
And flew above our fields
To photograph the harvest
Of yet another record yield
From yet another record season
While the record sunset swirled
Above the gold horizon line
While Daddy fed the world
But then the banks got anxious
And then the axes fell
And the neighbours moved to Texas
'Cos the neighbours had to sell
And they were heading down to Houston
To give the oil rigs a whirl
'Cos you could hardly feed a family now
Where my Daddy once fed the world
Today there's corporations coming
As the family farmer fades
But the corporation story
Will never be the same
As those mythic summer evenings
When the constellations twirled
And Orion ruled the western sky
And Daddy fed the world
[February 1997]