Four Poems by John Drudge

 

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.