He'd never heard of replacement theory

but he was still sitting there

cowled in a no good hoodie

a cheap light grey like his complexion 

he who used to receive final demands

by lowering a bucket from an upstairs window

unhinged by losing the family farm

to irresistible forces

to inevitability 

those were the days
 

narrow old men trying to get the most

out of their narrow old tractors 

slim and puny workhorses 

when compared to the monsters

that superseded them

but still running on an idea

of efficiency through regular oiling

the treadmill of inheritance

the hoped-for success of repetition 

their pinched sunned faces

squint at the diminishing returns

their loosening holdings

with sloping ploughed fields

whose pious furrows end in

mists that could conceal sea 

sky a rainbow’s terminus

or Gawain’s green chapel

he won't budge until the undertaker

is booked and his pockets gone through

loss adjusted to nought

a vacated shell colonised 

by curious new creatures 

a beast among other beasts

brittle flinty had