Air Mind

I can’t remember a more mid midsummer
In summer’s joyous toil suddenly a pause
Remember the warm white frenzy of May
and solid labour of June now down the lane
beaming in the soft crackle of harvest fields,
above the easterly drift of pale blue sky
the unblinking eye of an ancient firmament
saying work is done for now.

The land told his story.
He hadn’t worked a plough for a year.
Patches of bald earth were woven into his wake.
The holes in the hedge were the scars of his solitude.
Emptiness enfeebles the voice and softens the will.
In time all tangibles of the earthly realm give way
to the living sense of it all - Air Mind.

Lost in Air Mind.
The world as seen from a squint:
the all-burning glare of brooks and neon hedges;
the sandy farm track that larva-creeps through the woods,
its spirited flame lashing at a blob of cover-crop maize,
which fades to a pale ginger thread,
little more than a scratch on a chopping board,
a figment of faraway seashells, cracked and tiny
strung together on a withering necklace.

Mercifully lost in air mind.
The first acres of barley are cut and baled;
the musty flock, square-governed and scattered.
A bouncy line of newborn straw then reels in the eye.
In his body slots lengthways into the itchy womb,
into a den of squeaky yellow filigree.

The stubble weakens, and he flattens to the Earth,
yet rises with golden whiskers, scratching voles.
Luminescent limbs
now flailing a beauteous anomaly – pawing up to Ra.
Bountiful green domains hurry to a gilded death
at the hands of the straw god,
who makes aureate each urging strand.
Air Mind anoints with harvest orange
the grainy skin of the moon
and that hefty globe descends like
a giant drooping skull.

So another year will pass, I think, before
he picks up the plough again.