If I hold the harvest, I will not go mad
to reap the vision of my wheat, just scythed
and waving in a field of yellow stalks
blown by a wind that raves inside my head,
scatters my thoughts, once in a neat sheaf tied,
now by the fury of a mental storm unleashed
into a sky of black crows’ wings that beat
blue air into a storm of rage and loss.
If I hold the harvest, I’ll see things as they are
with square bales squarely on the ground.
Not in this landscape where a frightened town
huddles beneath a cypress and a spire,
awed by a dozen haloes in the sky,
the vortex of a wild careening star.
Gulf Stream Magazine 