Harvest Lights

Another ten words contest entry...

The sunflowers that were but seedlings last month

Now remain as dried up stalks

And I couldn't help but linger...

Linger and walk about the dried-up patch

And wonder where the time had gone.

Time, oh the sly little thing, had slipped 

Right past my fingers 

And rotted away along with this patch

Of cracked dirt and wilted leaves --

So this is what it means! 

The tantalizing Harvest lights dance farther out, 

Round and glowing like little orbs and

Hang from bright festive string as 

I sit, alone and removed, upon a slab of alabaster,

And mourn methodically over a 

Loss that was never mine.

A stallion, young and sturdy gallops past my field

Of vision and carefully cultivated grief,

Flicking its tail. How flamboyant!

How absurd, to be mocked by such a beast

I wave my fist angrily at the beast's noisy retreat...

And then it was quiet. So horribly quiet!

I tiptoed on the hollow corpses

Of the sun's short-lived children and squint into the night

But the stallion is gone and I'm all alone

In a barren patch trapped in a chamber of darkness.

Author's Note

Sunflowers have always made me feel uneasy. I'm not sure why...but wilting sunflowers are even worse! Maybe this is a new phobia....haha!