Upon the drills a drift of driest earth does rise
And stirs upon an idle scenery drawn away
On lazy wind behind a tractor’s rolling tires
The season’s silent cares and peaceful visage plays
Upon the sweeping plains of distant lands, and moves
The artist’s soul to lie where hardened labors ply
Among the dust, the noise, the sweat, the diesel fumes
The teeming rhythm— the life that idyl belies
The cyclic seasons, deep winding tumults of time
Where pain and joy, death and birth, ever real appear
A living, a labor no brush or pen may rhyme
For nature is fickle, experienced in years
A life that fewer beings know, except as scenes
Simulacrum, mediated in lucid dreams.
©2026 R.A.R. Knight
First published in Reveille Journal
Author’s Note
The poem was first published in a different form, here revised into a form closer to iambic hexameter
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