Hayseed

T. WEISS

HAYSEED

The byways

of my oaten straw? Toot

as I will, the fruits do not

respond; the tension in the room

does not resound

a catalog

of ships and heroes, the clustered

dooms between them, wreaths hung

on a tree at dinner. My music

is more modest.

Still its reedy

pipings rehearse a time that might,

with leaning like a face, survey

some courtyard or a clearing

under an arc-light

where action

is not completely shamed. Minors

of the wind, flawed though they

may be, blow through to keep

a minor flare or two.

Straw,

swayingly wheaten once, remarked

the passing of many positive fates.

At last, when night came down

like kindness,

it echoed-

unforgettably-young lovers

breathing out their burdened air,

as if the heroes, war-enkindled,

rooted here,

the fleet

enroute, sail-in-sigh-winged,

to their saltier waterings, Mars

by Venus, the gods amazed, rising

in their netted trade.

T. WEISS