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A HINT OF HARVEST
David H W Grubb
He gets up in the tired night
and enters the farmyard still ringing with moon.
If he could plant some serious words
in the top field and let them grow
and return to read their sense
when silence had become the easier thing.
If he could state these things as confidently
as he built a hedge and made the acres work;
but not words, too late for words.
Now the damage remains, the hunched house
whispering, white grass between the slabs
and as he returns to open the curtains
the hill no longer leaps, his image spies in
on him from the window glass. He sees his father
and even his grandfather and dead foxes and
birds burst by the gun. He sees the sadness
of his fact, his broken being, hears the wind's
derision as the gob of the letterbox
spews news of other tragedies.
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If
he could plant some serious words
and let them grow in the top field
and discover their blooms one summer,
or gather a friend to observe the wonder
and tell the priest on a good morning
how all this had value, was not lost,
was not mistaken. If he could plant
some words that would not roar rebuke,
would perhaps sing just once or twice,
would remind him of his mother's messages
as she came in from the milking; a little
laughter, the seed of a joke, something
to pass on, even a hint of harvest. |
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