April brings the opening of the Mid-America Windmill Museum for another exciting tourist season. Windmills awaken memories of growing up in the country listening to their songs and watching the blades turn in the wind. Poets have long been writing about these magnificent marvels of wood and steel. As you tour the museum, take a moment and ponder the words of these poets and remember a time when...
The Old Windmill
Across the broad expanse of meadowland,
Its profile boldly etched against the sky
How stubbornly the once proud windmill stands,
Defending still its right to live or die.
All else has vanished, the barns and silo too,
Evoking from the heart nostalgic scenes
Of long ago when the windmill was new
But now it stands alone and dreams its dreams.
Sometimes it dreams of meadows parched and dry,
Of anxious eyes that watched and hoped and yearned;
Of fervent thankful prayers and joyous cries,
When once again the wheel began to turn.
So let it dream and may it ever be
A link that binds with yesterday
For as a sentinel guarding memories
The old windmill has earned its right to stay
Oleta Maddox Harris
Windmill
15 steel blades reaching
Into the Autumn skies catching
Winds kicked up
By September storms.
Hoisted above a homestead resting
On the Midwestern prairie praying
That water can be drawn
From beneath the hard sod.
Windmill's wheel is turning,
For all the seasons feeding
Barren land creating Their own Garden of Eden.
Scott Sprunger
A Windmill Talks
When I was a young lad
My grandparents had a windmill
I'd sit and listen to it talk
And never get my fill.
It would knock and groan
As the blades whirled above me
A creak here and a rattle there
It was something amazing to see.
The sucker rod rattled going up
And sighed going down
How could this happen I wondered
As the windmill went round and round.
But it paid no attention to me
Sitting there watching that show
As I listened to all of that noise
From a pipe water did flow.
The water filled a large metal tank
The overflow ran into the milk room
Where cans of cool, creamy milk sat
Waiting for the milkman that afternoon.
The water flowed on to a pond
Where farm animals drank their fill
What an amazing contraption it was
That old noisy clanking windmill.
Robert J. D. Rayber
Created by Sara Hobson April, 2022