Harvest Time

The crows have started to flutter around here,

More often now than they had been. The ground is

Brown, everything already taken, gone, sent somewhere

Where it could be of more use to people who weren’t

As lonely as I am. Just standing here.

For a while, you kept me company. I suppose you

Liked the way I looked, or maybe on particular times of the day

You found me to be a comfortable place to rest.

You would lean on me. Share with me your secrets,

Your desires for the future. And I believed you.

I suppose, when you left, I expected that I would be able to follow you.

The way you’d made me feel, with your words,

I thought surely I could fly away, with arms outstretched.

Anywhere, with you.

Instead, I find myself planted here, firmly,

While I have to watch you walk down that road,

Away from me, with someone else linked in your arm.

I felt like I’d been promised the world,

But who was I to think such things?

For all the talk you were, about how you had felt 

Destined to end up alone, small wonder that it was me

That was destined to be here, by myself, in the end.

The shoulder, the chest, the ear, on which you and others

Had relied, really only made of straw, staked to the ground,

Surrounded by the remnants of a harvest I didn’t get to eat,

My only company the crows that, slowly, learned not to fear me,

Showing their affection for me by taking me away from here,

Piece by piece, until soon there won’t be anything left

But the stake in the ground that is my heart,

The one I wish you’d taken home with you.