Barley Ghosts

Something stalks where no man ever whispered,

twisted the stem after harvest here,

where land has always been arable.

Reaping, ploughing, sewing scarred land,

but something left untouched.

Some tread undiminished by furrows,

not contained in the rigid lines;

some life decidedly unlike mine and yours.

This the barley knows,

this thing other than ghost, than flesh,

the un-guest, the elemental.

Some fleeting form that is bornless,

that makes all crops shiver,

that delivers in due time

more than ripe grain,

to be reaped by the mind,

winter hoarded, cold recalled

in the ancestral granaries,

this things which guard

the still heart of the land.

;