Great Britain | Rural Fiction Magazine

Piles of soft tissues, hidden layers of consciousness,
shifting sands on a distant shore.
That picture of the sea, the path of reflected moonlight,
the boat on the horizon that never arrives.
An antique sword on the grey wall; forgotten wars,
unremembered dead, no echoing bugle call.
Hearths, grates, long cold – once crimson embers, dead,
in half-forgotten places.
On dusty shelves, gilded volumes, lie unloved, unread,
Meredith, Disraeli, Carlyle, Macaulay, Chatterton, Gibbon,
confined to donnish chat in seminars or Senior Common Rooms.
The kitchen range, smell of new bread, of Christmas cake
stirred weeks before.
The kiss of warmth after wintry walks through snowy fields
and icy lanes.
A back gate unlocked, for next door to borrow eggs,
a pinch of salt, a packet of tea.
Vague shapes of ornaments, brash trash, gifts from Brighton,
Hastings and Winchelsea.
Fading in the shifting sands of time, those many dogs
chasing rabbits through golden autumn woods.
Asleep, dreaming, perhaps still following the old habits
across the fields of memory.
Music echoes, Mozart, Mahler, Chubby Checker, Conrad Twitty
smoke, log fires, the smell of rain.

Gas bills, health insurance, disabled badges, pensions, funerals
New York, London, Sydney, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Vancouver
Tissues tear, sand shifts,
the tide retreats again -

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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Rural Fiction Magazine

Tag Archives: Great Britain

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