The Hunterian

The Harvest Wake
(Sept 2014)

Damp and dusk huddle
round dying flames

old summer smothered
in a smoke of slow heat

leaves, blackthorn branches
smoulder by empty fields

muffled voices splutter
curse the year’s turning.

From tongues lost to song
silence demands its time

shrunk indistinct figures
truckled to mud

stare at the embers
distance in expressions lit.

Journey in the hung head
of a hobbling cob

in the white of its long face
the road ahead.

Gypsy fires are burning
For daylights past and gone.

Jim Carruth