BURNT STRAW IN TEN ACRE

High on the hill slopes,

Red flames lick the entrails of dusk.

All I can hear is the crunching greed –

Of fire devouring stubble

And broken bales,

Wiping round the headlands

To find hawthorn just out of reach.

A thousand ghost-faced farm workers

Seem to haunt me,

A thousand patterns of flickering shadows.

You cannot imagine the intense and terrible awe,

The narrow divisions of horror and beauty.

It is to forget civilisation and urban norms,

It is to find elemental thrill.

Copyright Michael Newman