Published in Small Farmer’s Journal:

Reality

On the nighttime frenzy freeway

Stream interminable jets of light,

Relentless, swift, impersonal.

More unsettling than jagged streaks of lightening,

They stab and jam encompassing ebony sky,

Distort sensation,

Drown all earthy sounds,

Taint all fragrance,

Blur the scene,

Oh for the sound, the feel of wagon wheels,

Homeward bound,

Gritty on gravel,

Then soft and almost silent

On the pungent velvet of downy dooryard grass!

 

Laura: Her Farm

She looked for beauty where she walked;

The shady, dewy places under trees,

The cool and short-cropped pasture grass,

The rock-filled streams, old barns – she noticed these.

 

There, she dreamed, she’d spend her days

Where blossom-fringed lanes go crooked by,

Where fields are rimmed with grey stone walls.

And tops of elm trees sweetly grace the sky.

 

She scanned for beauty where she rode,

With friends she’d chat while auto zoomed the hills,

But glimpse of Fleeting, shining glade,

A meadow caught and lost, she’d then grow still.

 

On way ot office through the crus

Of traffic din that she could not accept,

Recalling still, idyllic scene

Of hedges framing dooryard phlox, she wept.

 

Gift of Jay and Carol Rhoads

January 2018