Dusk dims the light and veils this farm’s
Forgotten face and homespun charms.
Behind rusted gates
A crow cultivates
Earth that waits
For tanned arms

To harness moody mules to plow.
No wrinkled face with sweaty brow
Lifts toward welcome rain.
Equine weather vane
Tosses mane,
Jumps a bough,

And pivots toward the Pleiades
Before an unseen hand can seize
The reins or halter.
Tarnished hooves falter:
Tracks alter
With the breeze.

Then moonlight cools July’s hard heat
And silvers errant stalks of wheat.
With darkness erased
My memories taste
Of dreams chased—
Bittersweet.

~The Old Homestead, Jeffersonville, Georgia

First published in Lyric, vol. 97, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 105. Print.

Notes:

Like many aged wooden farmhouses in the vicinity of Middle Georgia, the Old Homestead was abandoned and left to deteriorate. The family moved into a brick house on the property.