Considering the harvest

I don’t know if it was a good harvest

The fields stretch bare and dry

Under fierce August sun.

Shorn dry sticks greet the sky.

Nothing moves.

After the harvest is barren time.

How does the bounty taken

Compare to the desolation

That remains.

I’m on the margins, always

With wild oats and woodspurge

Gleeful scarlet pimpernel

Wild rye, and clover.

Here is wealth and abundance

Dancing butterflies.

If I pluck ripe fruit from hedgerows

I will leave lushness behind me.

Abundance for all, berry rich.

Out in the field I glean stalks

As ancestors of poverty would

Have done in centuries past

Backs bent for hours, seeking

The fallen grains that might

Nourish the most desperate.

Three heads only do I take

For the symbolism, not the need.

The land remembers reaping

A community in harvest,

Working together to bring the grain

Home in glorious sheaves.

I have made harvest loaves

But never walked the wheat field

For the gathering in.

Machine driven, we take all

Leave the dry and empty remains

A harvest of life, without stories

Diversity only at the margins

After the crop is taken.

Tempting to see the human tale

Of bad choices made.

We take too much, too much

In our excess we make a world 

Too barren for our flourishing

Too dry, and lifeless.

Coax back the cheerful pimpernel

The living abundance of nature

Bring back from the margins

What should be in all places.

Flowers, insects, birds, life.

Life is what we are missing

From these mistaken harvests.

We sacrifice so much to gain

So very little.