Wheat
Your boots thump the dust
on the stile’s nether side.
As you weave through the wheat,
somehow the brow of the hill is obscured
and although you see it plainly
the line of oak trees is not quite there.
You are lost in fog on the brightest day of the year.
Perhaps it is ivy reddening on a farmhouse
or a pigeon balanced on telegraph wire:
the lift in the solar plexus,
the land comes into focus.
Soon you will leave this place,
return to the burrow of the house
and you will grieve
but for now, the wheat
moves in the wind
and something within
moves with it.
James R Kilner is the author of two books of poetry, Frequencies of Light (2015) and Persephone (2017). He is a former newspaper journalist and lives in the north-east of England. His website is www.jameskilnerwriter.