Roslyn Ross: ‘The Winnowing’

The Winnowing

Raised across the parapet of mind,
words frowned in distant gathering,
horizon-huddled holding to the edge
of possibility defined, waiting for

release upon the brooding ledge of
endless misunderstandings, restless
as they honed edges to deadly shine,
ready to cut without mercy; wielded

in a winnowing of mechanical fear,
compressing dry, cracked stalks of
hope into bales, tied for distant, ever
imagined Winters where life could

chew listlessly at dried remnants
of what had once been lush, ebullient
green salvation, thrust from fallow
earth, reaching always for the distant

anxious sky where sullen blues held
court for scattered sunbeams, tripping
through realities which danced slowly
at the bidding of bestial breeze, and

delicate, whispering winds which
rattled hollow husks, bereft of fertile
grains, abandoned, sterile, grieving
in those fields of futures known,

and unknown, where Occam thoughts
spread like scythes, laying…