A boy should live on a farm
    Let’s go, let’s go
Shelter Liam from the harm that creeps
In stolen places—Let him go
Laugh in the hay, laugh with chickens
Watch Micky at the milking, Wellingtons in muck
While froth rises thick
From warm, steaming buckets

A boy should live on a farm
    Let’s go, let’s go
Shelter Liam from the harm that creeps
In stolen places—Let him go
Wander where the three red cedars grow
Pad in soft, mossy glades
Of ancient maple draped in old man’s beard, in rows
Down forgotten rocky riverbeds

A boy should live on a farm
    Let’s go, let’s go
Shelter Liam from the harm that creeps
In stolen places—Let him go
Follow the dog through passing meadows
Where sunlight and fresh breeze
And secret marshes set children’s cheeks a-glow
Whose golden heroes sally out from hideaways like these

A boy should live on a farm
    Let’s go, let’s go
Shelter Liam from the harm that creeps
In stolen places—Let him go
Let him laugh, but beware
The snagging stings of memory
Beware—a man should die of grief
For fields no longer there.  Ephemera

A boy should live on a farm
    Let’s go, let’s go
Shelter Liam from the harm that creeps
In stolen places—Let him go

--Dunstan Skinner, November 2006