Against The Harvest

Against The Harvest

It’s what I never feared that has come to devil
Me the most. Sent back and now standing
Here, round this road-crook,waiting for his
Distant get to finally make it past me

On just the right night. How many of the
Old ones told me he never meant me any
Blood, never cast forward to the ashes
Of decision, the thing that followed him

After he glanced down into that shower-
Filled stump on that half-moon night,
And what She had thrown to him came forth.
Standing now, standing ever, I am

Rooted to this patch and cannot roam,
Companion to the possums who try to climb
My limbs but leave me with cold hiss and new-moon
Glance. I felt his hog-killing blade across

My voicebox that November dusk as I was
Coin-pocketed and town-bound, and never
Spoke again, not even now, not even
When my bays bounce across these hollers

And make the orphan pull her head beneath
Her Mamaw’s quilt. Until the last decade
I never feared lonesomeness, but now
I have digested it in full and know

Its dust in the echoes of the halls, and if
I could rake my way through the mist
That keeps me, I would, I would, I would just to
Hear words aimed at me, even if they

Were curses, even if they were imprecations
Called down on what I never thought I would
Be, a haint who stands and waits because
The night-raven brought me news (he sneered

As he spoke, so he may have been lying,
But I love him for his sins against the
Harvest) of a great-great-great something,
Was it a nephew, who now rests his hereditary

Head not many sighs from here, and has
Already passed me at the wrong cycle
Of the dial more than once. He will
Be funneled down like sand, like ground webs,

Channeled and he will pass me by, he will
Pass me by, and my own instrument
Will come out of its shadowed place and in my
Lonesomeness now at this hour I cannot

Even discern, in my lonesomeness now,
I wonder if his wide eyes will see me,
I marvel at the possibility, I wonder
If he will understand that the leaves of a family

Tree will one day fertilize the roots,
And that his toll is paid on behalf
Of a sepia image pressed in the leaves of a burden
He never took up — my wonder belongs to him.

~ S.K. Orr (2017)