stooks .. .

..

by the three quarter interchange

on the seven mile strait out of Stickney Lane

I caught sight of a field of ice cream corn

waving slowly, no threat of rain

..

cornet skies with party hats

inside nimble dancers sway

high-wheeled wagons with their whiskers

beneath clouds where earth-worn women lay

..

Uncle Festus in his patchy dungarees 

broadsides to the cousin twins

their sticky fingers too small to tie the corn

grub-infested, wishing they might never have been born

..

at close of day they settle with their grammy

on heaps of August hay, she tells them stories

since her Dora gave up trying on the threshing floor

that sore-sun year she spoiled a harvest

..

still no sign of Cory who left one year

he stole Mister Gypsum’s ponies

and a trap worth more than he had ever earned

so the gang carries on and the boys stay poor

..

on my horizon I see men with sweated sythes

in our home county I gather up these thoughts

draft mares pulling threshers, the dots, the dashes

combine across these digital planes of ones and noughts

..

grandpa lived in a 2-bed home with outhouse shitter 

in which you sat to see Orion’s sisters and the rain that falls

in life he was a carpenter who painted in oils

Clydesdale pictures framed in unused wood

..

in the toyshop a bald man stands in a cardigan

collecting pennies from we three hummel figurines

Hornby memories of a handmade apothecary of dreams 

the stooks I bought were for the trainset we enjoyed

..

rolling scenery in plaster, a plywood valley set on risers

taken from a private dream where landscape verses sleep

upon the hills and hollow hills above the corn beneath

I see it swarthy, a sea of bees, a honeycomb perfection

..