At the edges of the  failing year,
Since October when the clocks were changed
The furrows, fields freeze with a wild, stark awe.

Trudging landscapes keen and winter-bare
The lines and lengths artistically arranged
By  my eye, this cold day of this year

A single bird flies high with dark winged flair
Insects disappear in sullen rage
The furrows fang the fields with snake-like airs.

Where’s the goat untroubled by a care?
Where’s the lamb they wish to be destroyed,
Unknowing of its future, as Jews were?

See the dead men rising up afar
The eye creates the image and the stage
The furrows stagger, stutter, “here’s the  war”

On such themes, imaginations crash
Aching for God’s chosen unto death
Will there be another farmers’ year?
Why do furrows feel like wailing stars?

 

 

 

Now love is not an easy word to use,
for excess talk has torn away its soul.
In cards and letters,we must stand accused;
so where love dwelt,there’s now a widening hole.

And if our language changes, what’s the cost,
when life departs from words that meant so much?
Or is there something permanently lost
when hands and pens have lost the way to touch?

We soon forget what loving used to mean
We change to fit our fractured complex realms
Till we are now as fractured in our schemes
and what once was,seems never to have been.

Yet there’s a remnant found in art and song
Which we can capture if our spirits long.