#wheat
Pleading for a purchased god
Romanticized for its ancien régime
Celiac, and yet I licked the wheat paste
Of the letter I was was trimmed A4
In all that time spent by the basin
(and its traffic-trimming wetlands)
I only rode my bike to the depot
To color code my calendar
When capital kept its calls collect,
When the gravy train kept me idle
Each chamber would be emptied
Fruitlessly: punch drunk with praise
(Indulge a little)
Each from four through five: orchestrated
The plains always claim the sixth
(Respecting the tradition of western folk)
Only three will ever threaten treatment
Sep 25, 2022
Sep 25, 2022 at 9:57 PM UTC
Hidden giver, sighing life into fields of
Wheat’s ears, rolling tide-like to meet the rusted gate of cracked through orange-ore, resting ajar, guarding the hedge line
Arms out, splaying fingers I divine life here-
God’s flame, burning Barakah, sacred zephyr
warming fingers, frosted with tired life help them loosen and live bright
May 6, 2021
May 6, 2021 at 5:11 PM UTC
Myth
by Michael R. Burch
Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.
And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.
Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.
I believe I wrote the first version of this poem toward the end of my senior year of high school, around age 18 in late 1976. To my recollection this is my only poem directly influenced by the “sprung rhythm” of Dylan Thomas (moreso than that of Gerard Manley Hopkins). But I was not happy with the fourth line and put the poem aside for more than 20 years, until 1998, when I revised it. But I was still not happy with the fourth line, so I put it aside and revised it again in 2020, nearly half a century after originally writing the poem! Keywords/Tags: sprung, rhythm, myth, gorse, thistles, wheat, mown, grain, sheaf, faith, grief, golden, humble
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 5:21 AM UTC
You did not choose your father,
Neither did your father knew you;
Your birthright was only seeming,
Never yours from the beginning.
As waters separated from waters,
So sheep separated from goats.
But there is no seas in the end,
And all tares burned and wheat gathered.
Mar 4, 2020
Mar 4, 2020 at 11:12 PM UTC
cool spring water
fresh ground flour
with love and time
growing a bit sour
a spectacle divine
Jul 13, 2019
Jul 13, 2019 at 11:54 AM UTC
Eight steps away,he stood,
Amidst the smoke, he smoked.
His veins popped Green,
Over his wheat like skin.
I place the hand beneath my chin,
Metaphorizing his apparent age to mine.
Remember those delighted little girls,
Tossed,tickled and furled.
Their young adult neighbours,
Perquisitely whom the dolls favour.
The gaze that they give at them,
From beneath with heads up and a long stare...
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 7:01 AM UTC
harvest time beckon
golden wheat, natures sunshine
natures lavish gift
May 25, 2018
May 25, 2018 at 3:47 PM UTC
I dream of Wheat, and a wife in a past life.
It always plays back to me in flashes like a memory of a past life. Her ankle length Azure dress, the blue sky with so few clouds. Her pale skin and bare feet as we walk. I carry her many brass-buckled sandals as we walk, these are things that always come back to me in echos, these things always remain constant. It started when i was a little girl, maybe six or seven, I started having a series of recurring dreams. The one I tell you about now always feels like it happened before, I call it “Woman of Wheat.”
Sometimes I am a grown man, I wear leather bracers with lions or a tree, an old oak design. My hands are calloused and as I look down to step over a root I see my maroon tunic and leather breeches and buckled boots I wear also. I am tall and strong. My blades are heavy and familiar upon my back.
Sometimes I am a Grown Woman, I wear Iron rings upon my hands, and brass wrist cuffs with a chiseled vining flower design. My hands are scarred from my previous life of war, my arms are scared and I feel the pain of the fire under my brass arm cuffs even still. As I look down to step over a root I see my white knee-length dress, secured with a brass chain belt, the buckle is chiseled leather with a Lion head, a mane made of Serpents. My thin yet deadly blade bounces on my hip. Why do these things stick out to me so? I was once able to bear, but cannot any longer, yet our children are strong and beautiful.
Her face, always seems out of focus as we walk upon the worn path through the golden, harvest ready wheat stalks. They come up near out chests and waists, I run my hands over the grain as I pass. Her shoes dangle always in my right hands, my Sword hand.
Her hair falls in Ringlets down to the center of her back. The Sun lights her up, making her seems like a Seraphim or Valkyrie. It shines Golden, red and caramel in the light of day, like blood stained gold, soft as silk she sometimes lets me braid it.
Her laughter sounds like joyous chimes around us. Sometimes, their laughter, the laughter of our children joins in, as they rush through the wheat just out of sight. I catch glimpses of them as they run past me, they are so beautiful and fill me with love. My sons and daughter, our three children, my little lion cubs.
When she turns back to me, she doesn’t say anything, just smiles an joyous smile upon her crimson painted lips, and her laugh twinkles through the air like soothing chimes in the air once more. Her eyes I cannot remember the shape, but I will always remember the color; A clear emerald, seafoam green. It is these eyes I fell in love with when I first looked upon her, and do so every time. Her soul shines like a lighthouse, to a sailor lost in a hurricane through them to me.
It is so peaceful as we walk, just walk though the wheat on a clear day as a cooling breeze shuffles the land. I don’t know how long the five or so of us walk through the fields, just walking through our harvest with a purpose to be somewhere, but us in no hurry to get anywhere. Only laughter from her and the children ringing around me, and I chuckle at their antics.
It feels as though I had waited lifetimes to have this sort of peace after all I feel I have done.
When I wake I am always happy but a little sad. I never know the shape of her or my children’s faces. I only know their eyes and hair and laughter. I have never known them in this lifetime, in this reality. But I miss them as though I did.
Written: Monday Febuary 20th 2017
Oct 2, 2017
Oct 2, 2017 at 2:27 PM UTC
The past
It's always on my mind
The grassy backyard I grew up in
This and that-memories of
Halloween, rabbits, fall, you.
All the things that pass in time.
I pick up this notion that
One may recall what happened to
Them when they were a young kid.
The balloons touching the ceiling of
My pre-school, the quiet time when
We supposedly slept but never did.
Like the color yellow, how I loved it,
The '89 earthquake, being shocked by it.
Songs in Kindergarten. Art, pictures, music.
Summer camp, exploring the wild, love, light,
And wind. I remember my brother
And I playing tag as the sun went
Down in the first house I moved in.
Running along the fields in the day,
Swimming, or memories of the
Tumbleweeds performance,
Being In the play.
All of the times I would always
Watch the sun on the swing as it rose
In the morning. I remember the vast
Wheat fields, a sense of calm quiet,
As if there were no place more peaceful.
Climbing my favorite pine tree in my back yard.
But one thing I remember more than ever
Was being on a field of my own.
The sky is filled with clouds always
Floating off like they
Were from an endless world of tranquility,
This warm sun, this was and-I forever remember
It to be-my one true home.
But that is another story...
Jul 13, 2017
Jul 13, 2017 at 5:42 AM UTC
Identify at once
The words jumble in my throat
Retribution shock
Governing by my ticking clocks
Spewing wind to fill the sails
Empty boats
Floating down
Glinding along gilded banks
Wheat can seldom feed a soul
Only bloat the burdend mind
How does the horizion break?
When did all my buds bloom
Long into the night
And slowly wither away
But never die
Change is mine
And when it comes to me
My will I cannot abide
There will be no sacrifice
I live my life by the dimmest light
The words I could speak
To blow it out
Flowing over the tip of my tounge
But Seldom ever spoken
Silence is golden
And the danger may be closer than it appears
And you'll never know if the end is near
And the ones i loved, cherished and relied most heavily upon
Can slip god through my viens...
And yet the new ones
The immitators I've neglected
Seldom speak to me, irony a bitter curse
And up untill this day, and onwards down the current
the words still escape me
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 3:01 AM UTC
While most people are familiar with
the principle of ‘sowing and reaping’,
it can be difficult to distinguish
between Fact and Fiction; gleaning
the Truth sometimes takes time, so
that the authentic and the fake can…
be properly separated. Sad jealousies
are found when the evil works of Man
bloom against the stark contrast of
God’s reality; seeing the good and bad,
subtly reinforces our understanding of
the wheat and tares; let us be glad,
in knowing how God divinely operates;
in Him, we can move and have our being
when our Faith is extended on behalf
of His Kingdom; when we are agreeing
with His Word, it’s easier to love and
care for others regularly, as we must;
will people observe us as His Children,
if we’re not placing in God… our trust?
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 2:09 PM UTC
Wheat crop shines
plenty of water in canal
starvation disappears
Sep 6, 2016
Sep 6, 2016 at 8:52 AM UTC
It’s the color of the sun
The one with rays that beat down
And warms your skin on a bright
Summer day.
It’s the daisy garden,
The one just outside your front door;
It’s scent, so fresh and sweet
Fills your nostrils with the smell of summer.
And the sweet, sharp wheat
The ones that make you sneeze
And yet you can’t help
But drag your fingers lightly against their flesh
And take in their musty scent.
Or the shutters of your neighbor’s cottage,
The ones with the soft pastel that stands out among
The white siding
And the pale door
It’s the bow in your daughter’s hair,
The one that she fought
But you insisted,
Because it’s beautiful
The way she looks in that hue.
And it’s the color of your happiness,
The one that shows through the bright smile
That stretches across your face
And bleeds golden joy.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 11:36 AM UTC
Who are these farmers,
And who, these fertile fields,
Verdant under native grass,
That stand un-plowed,
That shake beneath the plow,
That lie now fallow,
That bear the planted seed,
That wear the heavy grain,
That await the Harvest pain?
And who, these Harvesters,
And who, these close-shorn fields,
Desolate in short-cut stubble,
That stand, stiff in silence,
That wear the heavy tracks,
That have endured the harvest,
That yielded up their dead,
That bristle through the falling snow,
That whistle wind-song low?
And who, these merry Farmers,
And who these stubbled fields,
Glistening beneath the melting snow,
That warm beneath the glowing sun,
That host the migrants of the sky,
That tremble the biting plow,
That accept the falling seed,
That wait beneath the welcome rains,
That cycle through the seasons once again?
Jul 30, 2015
Jul 30, 2015 at 9:29 AM UTC
Your eyes where the color of summer wheat grass
They promised a hot, hazy summer
And reminded of life brought to it by the spring
Like brushing my fingertips across the wheat grass
My eyes sweeping yours
Let me feel everything that you where
Are now
And like a seed in the wind
Everything that we could be together.
Dec 16, 2014
Dec 16, 2014 at 9:50 PM UTC
I first saw the wheat in the morning,
smelled the wind blustering forth--
Wondered that it must taste like
that very morning, in what complex way crops do.
And when the bear-locusts eat them,
what they would say
if they bled pans of gold to romance their amber,
if only then
would they be jubilant
if only on their death beds!
"Don't admire the fields," says Agricoltore.
Why?
"Because they like--they don't change."
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 6:17 PM UTC
Sunflowers in the sun
feeding from the light
like a golden watercolour painting
Field mice nibbling
Bees buzzing
Coming out to play
In the middle of a wheat field
Turned over
looking up at the dust particles that fill the sky
Oh how wonderful it would be to become a mole
Or fly.
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 8:11 PM UTC