Early Morning on the Farm

Fog shrouds the farm.
Horses in the far field
are like a mirage -
some snow,
grizzled gray trees,
the frozen snort
of a stallion -
it doesn't take much to blur.

Jane's on her way
to the chicken coop.
A flake
lands on her cheek,
a cold, damp, wake-up.

The world is in-between.
The wind is strangely warm.
The coop wire chills.
She's sixteen -
the child, the woman,
more mirages
for uncertain vision.

Hens scatter at her approach.
The rooster rears its comb and crows -
wattles flap, brown feathers flutter,
the day's first certainty.

A Farmer Dreams

Rain-splitter shares dreams with
cool fingered splendor,
one vagueness splattering the roof,
the other touching his hard skin tender.

One moment, he's young enough
for the thrums of memory,
the woman beside him,
shedding years like undergarments.
Then he's land, groggy from drought appeased,
trickles in cracks, floods in crannies,
dust sweetly laid, mud dripping from his thoughts.

He's half awake. His wife is snoring.
He can't wait to get out on the land again.
There's been a shift in pleasure

Life of the Amish Farmer

Humidity overheats
and bursts like a boil.
Heavy thunder, hail,
torrential rain and cooling.
The Milky Way drawn
by a single farm light
dangles out of the black.
By day, tobacco bends to the harvest.
The corn is holding green.
Esther and Daniel are blessed
with a new arrival, Lena.
The burial service for Lydia Yoder
is at 2.00 A.M.

We begin with the weather,
simple thrumming heartbeat.
Then, drawn to the sky,
witness our faith
awakened by its symbols.
The work, of course, is our Gelassenheit,
our sweaty submission,
a God tutoring to muscle,
to heavy footprints in the earth
and head bent low.

In practical epiphany,
the corn fields bind the air we breathe
like veins.
The child is born,
ripens everything.
An old woman dies
so crops won't have to.

Jenna on the Farm

Her face is still smooth
despite the long days in the sun.
The skin below her eyes
has cracked like land in drought
but the cheeks are fine as sand,
brown with just a trace of red
and the lips are unlined,
from years of more doing than talking.
Only the eyes
say the work was hard and wearying.
The back is ironing-board straight
and the neck high and proud,
but the eyes, once again,
a pale and bruised green,
speak the language
of bending and scouring and digging.
Maybe she looked in the mirror one time
and it was all too beautiful
for what her eyes were telling her.
Or maybe it was all like the eyes
and the rest had nowhere else to turn
but lovely.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly..

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If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like contemporary dark stories and poems, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.

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She shreds her flesh 
to offer it to the moon 
She offers peace 
as darkness leaves 
spring scatters magic seeds 
to the festival of the imbolc 
she is no longer a slave 
to the underworld 
stretches through the earth 
giving women fertility 
in a promised land 
She holds charms of the divine
glittering gold in their wombs 
holy wells filling dead eyes 
with unrest 
dazzled by the moon 
she weaves freedom into the 
heart of every woman 
She is a goddess of grace and beauty 
She is a goddess of poetry

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Sinead Mcguigan, a poet and psychology graduate from University College Dublin Ireland writes poetry that explores the human condition and the deepest emotions connected to experience.  Sinead wrote her first solo collection A Gift and a Curse while recovering from cancer; her new book Unbound is also available on Amazon. Sinead’s  main interests are travel concerts and art. She often collaborates with artists and have appeared alongside their work in many publications. You can find her work @sineadmcgpoetry on Instagram and Facebook. 

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Please share this to give it maximum distribution. 

If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like contemporary dark stories and poems, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.

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