"hayfields" poems
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn ****** our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
8k
*Faith in the tempered evening , for the Friday night reverberation -
of hometowns just over the Shamrock green horizon
For the day end Amber-glow of well kept -
Summer gardens
Blessed is the power of tonights Harvest Moon
The Suns early dedication to the Chattahoochee flora of the coming June
For morning dew prisms that ignite rolling hayfields
For talking Indian rivers , Railroad townships and period Flour Mills*
May 27, 2016
May 27, 2016 at 9:20 PM UTC
Some days we'd lay about the milled plank deck
eyes to the sky
shoulders pinned
deliberating
on the hickory trees
and pillow clouds
and heavenly contrails
the warm caress
of a mid-summer wind
whispering through the hayfields
coondog at our side
sandhill crane still
feet in the shallows
of the Haldimand pond
a soft trickle coming
from the Pickerel stream
creaks from the woodshed whistle
as the Massey Ferguson
putters her way
up the county line
catharsis in place
(in this ethereal space)
just a garden variety day
...with fire ants
and fowler toads
and golden honey bees
Aug 20, 2021
Aug 20, 2021 at 2:40 PM UTC
As Farm tractors brush the hayfields of Summer
White Holland turkey's and dairy cattle share
enclosed greenery ..
Late morning vegetable harvest , the cackle of
laying hens and Chinese geese , our Postman smiles
and waves with his Noon delivery ...
Hereford cattle on the move , Fig trees feeding
songbirds , bumblebees and hummingbirds working
the afternoon flowers ..
Tubular bells in town , just over the horizon strike the one o'clock hour ...
Apr 2, 2016
Apr 2, 2016 at 1:11 PM UTC
Your eyes are not portals to your soul
They are not some archaic metaphysical equation
Ancient mathematicians formulated to confound
They are pastures for nymphs
They are branches for fruit
They are laurels for poets
They rend me open like a flaming axe
They tie my stomach like knotted roots
I lose myself in their dusky wilderness
In them, I observe universes
Perpetually exploding and collapsing
Your pupils are black holes
At the center of galaxies
Balancing energy and force
Bending light inward
Like a sickle glistening high over hayfields
In them I hear songs
And sagas narrated by savage tongues
Of catastrophic floods and rebirth
Aryan myths about oneness
In them I see IVs dripping
Candles flickering behind carved pumpkins
I loiter in them like a pauper
With a styrofoam cup
Gazing on them is nearly intolerable
Like glaring at hydrogen bombs blinding
It is like Hebrews
Uttering the name of El- who cannot be named
El- who is above mortal matrices
The eye that never sleeps
The ear that always comprehends
The self that waivers like the sea
Eternity ends when you blink
Infernos extinguish when you sob
I tremble before them
As if they're holy relics
Decaying into perfection
Oh look upon me one last time
My love
Oh glance at me before
I petrify into pillars of salt
Look upon me
Before I transfigure into an amnestic god
Bearing light pure
Peer once more into my binary pulsars, frozen
In a fathomless abyss.
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 6:22 AM UTC
You becomes I,You become what you always have wanted.I have searched through the seas and the skies for this moment. I close my eyes and imagine I’m floating. Drifting. Falling without moving, if this is what peace felt like. I was finally at ease.
I jump and dance in the wind , becoming one with it. I swift my arms around my body and flow through the movement of the wind. Floating back and forth.But you trip and fall. Fall on your own words, fall on your own mistakes, fall on your own wild imagination.
Suddenly the ground opens up beneath you and your tumbling, tumbling through the dirt and the soils of the earth. You are Alice in your own Wonderland. Suddenly the loud sounds of busy traffic, horns from mechanical beings erupt you. You smell the heavy smell of chemicals through your nostrils, it burns,burns the surface of your skin. The light , the birds, the hayfields, its all gone. No sunlight, no peace or silence, no moment of ease.
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 9:18 AM UTC
*We've great faith in Mother June , hope for sunny morning -
miracles with myriad songbird tunes
I've shady Weeping Willows to rest beneath and contemplate my viability , still able to galavant the grassy hillsides , mocking many- a -latent physical disability
Privy to dirt roads crossing cool streams , wild Blackberry rows beneath pungent evergreens
Hayfields that reach the painted horizon , a blue water impoundment
with infinite wonder and surprise* ..
Jun 23, 2016
Jun 23, 2016 at 4:37 PM UTC
Lightning , stars and muscadine wine
Counting 'Angels Fire ' by increasing moonlight
Rain cooled midnight , lonely , solo whippoorwills ,
fresh cut hayfields
Coyote calls , crying for the morn
Nervous new acquaintances , be of free will
and let your love soar ...
Apr 9, 2016
Apr 9, 2016 at 9:19 PM UTC
My morning chaw of Levi Garrett was thirty minutes of superb pleasure ..
At peace in God's chosen country of Dove , Killdeer , morning dew and rolling hayfields , the smell of turned earth and afternoon Summer showers , the taste of green grass and blackberry in one precious plug , a working mans companion the whole year through .. A pack on the tractor , one at the barn door and one at the nightstand where my weary bones took ease at sundown ..
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 4:13 PM UTC
*The east appeared with gleam , sweetish and balm
Convective , white light did shine upon the fallows
Hayfields became lambswool , brown thrashers sang of rainbows , of life principle bestowed resurgent , appeased , arable piedmont cropland , genuflect before the bluest of blue , before the mother of cloudburst , upon the gray toned and the disturbed , the humbled stricken tenders of the lowland barrow within the earshot of crackling cane , across the froth of over washed brookside , oak liquor tipping the surface of pooled hollows , wire grass laid to rest among yearling pine and sycamore*
Oct 7, 2016
Oct 7, 2016 at 8:30 PM UTC
A kid can flee so easily
Running out the open door.
They’ll climb a tree and find a world
So different than before.
Some dig a hole and pile up snow
To make themselves a fort
Or take their leave across the fields;
A different kind of sport.
Crawling through the hayfields,
Picking berries in the grass.
Celebrating little streams;
Watching them flow past.
Cats and dogs and little frogs
Birds and squirrels and ponies
Draped in mirth and soiled with dirt
The earth is not so lonely
Stepping through the stony fields
Hoping that first kiss will last
Playing past the summer glow
The days flow by, it starts to snow
Suddenly a memory grows
It grows into a dream
Moving on into the haze
Entranced we fail to count the days
It’s just a game we have to play
The rhythm of the years descend
Pretending all the dreams are real
We pass our time inside the wheel
Then at last, in the light of day
We look around and feel the sound
Of the trumpets blaring in our ears
Gently teasing all our fears
We deny the facts but that won’t last
Stemming tears we’ve gathered here
Passing time inside our minds
Believing things we cannot find
So clouds drift by, time ticks away
The games we played are getting older
From little kids just playing soldier
The world now sits upon our shoulders
Oct 14, 2017
Oct 14, 2017 at 3:16 PM UTC
you absolutely melted me
in blackberry fields wild
Barefoot dancing in hayfields
Rolled up ...
Warmth inside rising
igniting a fire
for southern Baptist tithing ...
Melons ripe
chasing lightening bugs
laughter delights...
Mosquitoes bite
dinner bell rings
Harvest veggies bring
drooling sights...
As full tummies
return under quilts
from past Grammys
... end with sounds
..... of goodnight rounds
❤️❤️❤️
Aug 7, 2017
Aug 7, 2017 at 11:39 PM UTC