Yesterday's Gristmill
Sometimes, I can hear that happy, bubbly brook
bouncing over stones and under the wheel…that giant wheel.
It would drone along groaning a wooden song;
each night luring the brassy sun ever toward a distant skyline
by soft chattering of cog on cog and mesmerizing clockwork.
Other times I’m haunted by the gritty rasp of stone on stone
and swirling tendrils of fine dust doing a serpentine dance
through heavy air, reaching like so many ghoulish fingers
grasping desperately before dissolving;
coating my memories and that dusty wood-planked floor.
Yesterday I yearned for simpler times when
I would lazily strum my second-hand guitar
from a mossy log in the shade of our old gristmill.
Plucking those plaintive songs of young heartache
or gleefully accompanying cardinals in a nearby thicket.
But today all that remains is corporate.
Steel rollers chain driven by diesel motors.
A dried up creek bed cutting an over-burdened field
of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to grow
everything but food for my soul.
6/3/2018
Written for The Gristmill Poetry Contest
Hosted by Craig Cornish
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