August/September
2009 - Vol. 32
Wet
Fall in Summer
by Sean O'Neill
The towns run with water, or people’s dreams,
Where there are no seasons. But in the farms,
Where the damp, red metallic gate hinge screams,
The shaking stalls in sheds ward off alarms.
Farmers smile at the fly-blown days of June,
And the rump of curdled earth that would bake
The barley into bloom. Who thought so soon
Of the chasubles of mud the rains make?
For with each round iota’s shattered crown,
The combed head of the earth croons lullabies
To dupe the sleeping seeds to fetter down
Roots where this placental carapace dies.
And with every specter of new-mown rain
Making nightmares for the sound-sleeping land,
Heaven washes out again Abel’s stain
And cleans our fathers’ bones, on which we stand.
So what will they do with the harvest now?
Or the inland sea at the road’s turning?
Or the balding byres, or the sinking sow,
When the rains fall and the fields stop burning?
Good husbandry is marrying the land
And good farmers are cuckolds in the know.
The rain will fall but lightly on that hand
That will not turn the plough it would forego. |
[Sean
O'Neill is originally from Glasgow, Scotland, and currently lives in St.
Paul, Minnesota, USA. His poems range from the sacred to the mundane and
sometimes, inadvertently, both at the same time.]
.
|
. |
|