Black Pastoral
Red leaves sizzle in the twilit meadow,
like passion misspent. When the sun is down
at last everything goes, even shadow.
Overnight rain falls. Light wakes to a brown
basin of stagnancy. The few plants still
above the water strain hard not to drown.
Black-tufted birds land in the mud to kill
darting bugs washed to the surface, at last
feasting at the banquet of murder, til
men arrive with pistols in-laid with brass
to blast them to pink mist, shots well-placed.
The men have yellow teeth and eyes of glass,
no fear of hunting in a field defaced
by flood, that no man wants, elsewise a waste.
© Gary Charles Wilkens 2009
