In the meadows, grass grows tall.
Poppies, vetch and clover
caught in the summer light
paint a canvas worthy of
Monet, Cezanne, van Gogh.
Flies and gnats drifting in clouds,
rise and sink as the breeze
strengthens, then dies away.
The mower relentlessly scythes
through the swaying grass,
with all its flowery jewels.
A lark’s nest falls victim
to the executioner’s blade.
Field mice flee before
the flashing metal fangs.
Butterflies hover, mesmerised
by the magnetic power
of certain death.
That impossibly blue sky
throws its airy net
over distant valleys
and far hills.
Haymakers’ weather
at last!
In the heat of midsummer,
the swathes are slowly drying.
The hay bob’s been busy
tossing and turning
the sleepy clumps.
Soon dry grass is neatly raked
in military ranks, under
the machine’s strident orders.
In the shade of a wood,
the tractor driver snatches
a hasty snack, a sneaky beer.
Looks at a job well done.
All week the weather holds,
The morning mist drifts away.
An officious red baler disturbs
the lark’s song high above
in the endless blue.
Neat bales of new hay
form into rigid lines.
Brash binder twine
strangles the dying poppies.
As evening falls,
swallows fly low, over
the twilight fields.
Breasting the waves of darkness,
they fish the shoals of insects.
The bales of hay stand sentinels
over a deepening silence.
Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan. It has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and anthologies including ‘The New English Review’, ‘ Moss Piglet’, ‘Songs of Eretz’, ‘Quail Bell’, ‘Waywords’, ‘Cosmic Daffodil’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Hooghly Review’, ‘Meat for Tea’, ‘Rural Fiction’ and many others. This year she has been nominated for Best of the Net’ and a Dwarf Star’.
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