A Time
Coming
In time
Somewhere notoriously
Bleak
And out of fashion
Where peasants
Plough the fields
Exhausted
And felled under
In the too bright light
Of judgement
Eating roots
From the earth
Gnarled and brown
Waiting patiently
For a new horizon
And clinging desperately
To the soil
For survival
Maturity
Dismantling
Excessive loyalties
To ideas
To our own bigotry
And biases
Deconstructing
The aspects
Of our truth
Long buried
In the opposite
Of what we believe
Reason and passion
At odds
With our convictions
Gloriously unstable
As we obscure
The wisdom
Of our impasses
Becoming blissfully
Lost
In the tension
Between faith
And understanding
Without clear
Answers
Or solutions
Out of the
Mewling
Bound
By habits of thought
Twisted
Into capitulation
By a reluctance
To breathe in
Each new day
Without movement
Of our own
To support new growth
Shackled
To the inanity of temperance
With traditions of courage
And folklore
Abandoned one by one
In a muted revolt
Of hesitation
On the new floodplains
Of fear
Stumbling
Into abstract discontent
And whimpering
As we walk
Toward a lost horizon
In the faded Aniline sun
Pale Blue
Toward
The red-orange mountain
Sheer and rock-faced
With deep greens
And scattered scrub brush
Melting
Into the distance
Walking
With dreams of peace
Held close
Across the pasture
With the afternoon light
Pale on the horizon
As a lone crane
Rises
From the tall grass
Near the pond
And leaves a trail
Of powdered cobalt
Across the cooling sky
John Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology. He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.
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