The Gatherer* by Richard Hemmings
Hospital Coffee by Mark Jackley
* Updated version of The Gatherer provided by the author
The Gatherer
We go into the fields before daybreak.
First light colors orange into a sky of grays.
Scythes pivot against unwilling weeds' stake.
The ground is wet with the last day's turmoil;
dew stays.
And we shuffle to an unspoken tune.
A throbbing pulse calls,
not shouted,
but easily known.
Weeding out rushes
until the hour of noon, I wait
for a truth to be shown.
Sons, daughters,
our harvest: all one.
The sunlight, the morning,
the afternoon seals us and makes us dance.
Hands rise,
feet leave impressions,
a spinning wheel loops
The sun follows its path like a woman in a trance.
Say the sun is only a ball of fire
I say it is a God,
a clock,
my hands.
We gather Glory Be's
and we gather the minutes caught in wax.
Now, we are tired and going home;
slowly, studiously, steadily, steadily.
In the immense ledger of time
our return will merely be noted,
and, by then, the sun will shine somewhere else.
