by kevin macalan

And when the boys have left their fields,
and left their youth, and left their tight smooth skins,
the skies are dressed in colder sunsets,
blown further in, pressed deeper
into a slot of thought less often dislodged
as a memory by the probing scratch of reminiscence.

Etched into the dead-dark soil, small allotments
of wind-torn labour, in heathered fields
strewn with dusk, on coastal farms grow
sheep and old, and short of visions, until ruptured
dry-stones are the only sight: sad patchworked silhouettes
stooped beneath the weight of darkening sky.

Drumming winds erode to dust each clump of grey-brown sod,
and drive to foam the bay’s wet head to rob
the farm as age robs man. Dried and scarred,
forced to grow or wither at rest, an ancient mark
stood against the cleansing rub, the dripping rub, the endless rub
erasing youth from boys and boys from fields.