Harvest Past

These are the words that I felt were exactly what I required for the title of the poem I wrote after seeing in the distance an abandoned farmhouse in Kerry, Ireland. The small white building haunted me until the poem was written.

Harvest Past

Spleenwort curls from rough stone walls
and nettles sprout where children
used to play on stacked slab steps;
inside, stagnant silence fills
a vacuum - once living space -
and down below, where cattle stomped
the hay strewn floor, lie rust-iron tools
of harvest past; twisted sculptures
rising from dank gloom.

The house still stands as though intact,
outlined white between gaunt hills;
a simple mark as distance separates
past from present - but I fancy hearing
the lilt of laughter long gone
when a sudden trick of wind
moves in waves across the marsh grass
softly rattling seed-heads; dispersing time.