Nine-Pins and Tipple

Four kegs, they’d left on the rye field’s bare crest gone were the skittles and the balls of wood. Four kegs empty of magical brew, strewn upon the hill’s breasts, where gnomes had stood. They’d left long ago, twenty years today. Here’d been a mountain, where now a farm stood. They had left their tipple as each strike thundered to lambaste lightning from stacked firewood. On the rye field’s bare crest now shrouded in snow beneath a Wedgwood sky, stood kegs of wood. On the rye field’s bare crest each keg turned stone marking the bones where rebels once stood. Gone ‘till tonight, the gnomes and jack tars until the moon’s magic topped the keg’s wood. Gone till tonight were the hard balls and pegs this night spirits would dance where we now stood. Published 2017 by Illumen