The Touch of Gold

The farmers chew the earth

With silver mouths

Down below the surface hold

Of the golden wheat stalks

And bluish - purple the naked earth

Rakes herself together

In long and pulsing veins of wounded soil.

The wheeling rooks herald

The leafless winter

The time when cold winds

Find no resistance

And the boughs have left nothing

For the storms to strip them of.

The morning glory is no more

A flower but a crystal shimmer

Or a thick, resilient coat of ice

Impervious to the cover of cassette tapes

The brimming puddles defrost

Only for hours in midday

The slanting sun

Turning the remaining birch-leafs to fool's gold.

In that breathless aftermath

Of seedtime and harvest

I come to harvest love

From all my endeavour

Hoping for a touch of gold

In the furrows of your heart.

But..

Scorning, the raucous rooks

Of disdain and rejection

Herald another bleak winter

And I have no stores to live off

No golden memories to curl up to

But churning veins

Feeling cut and upturned like

The ploughed earth.

So my autumn is not so golden

And winter winds find no resistance

In my barren arms.

You blew right through me

This last summer

And my roots are shaking from the cold.

Your lips have cut me open

Like plough-shares bare the soil

Ready for a winter kill.