Theo Castle-McLean

They stood in the dust, miles high
and watched their flax tree burn
bright, arcing reflections off a childhood. 

A sale seemed likely. All through the 
scientific winter huddled for warmth, they
slackened. Letting a rope file into the sea. 

The day was red. This land without faces
only brown hills, sepia ribbons 
of an obliterated notion. 

It is impossible to imagine a room 
without you in it. 

Eventually, an endlessly complicated machine 
sits atop the farmland 
discursive chains screaming loops into the former blue sky,
the earth reverberating, like a wheelbarrow hit with a biblical stone.
Jack and his brothers were too old to farm anymore –