Image Source: Wikimedia The merchant returns, the port cheers him and there he anchors, to resupply his empty hold. Old farmland horses pull carts down the docks to his great vessel. Hooves plod the sea-drenched harbor, smells of salt moisten the air. Wooden wheels clatter past rowing fishermen who’ve come to port from the City’s warrens for the morning market opening onto the bay and brine,  the merchant poises his back and locks his neck, clapping his hands with festive shouts reading the docket, and to insure this voyage’s goods, he eyes the curious mariners asking him about the itinerary and ready to work Unloading and hauling, his sailors arrange the fresh crates in aisles and towers,

Image Source: Wikimedia I approached the field, my eyes met the stems across my palms I held the harvest— calloused furls, smooth ochre, future straw bales and sackcloth flour for market, storehouses and homes; supported by tillers. The Farmer observed his hired hands. Their backs rotated—a clock face of tanned skin with shoulders wide; from dawn their arms ticked to dusk, leaning arched and stiff. Singing they gleaned and planted, but from their work, none could make the wheat grow.

Image Source: Wikimedia “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” –The Christ Farmhands smacked their tongues in burnt air, sweat slid along their brows, down as sweltering sunlight rippled and obscured the ground. From a furnace, their souls’ found relief in sweaty palms. For each laborer a satchel of seeds and broken steel.

Image Source: Wikimedia  I I couldn’t tarry, so I wandered the dusty road for work. My destination loomed ahead—yet my thoughts remained captivated with the wheat, but I stopped at the tall and charcoal gates that imprisoned the City on the Mount. Behind the walls a horn blew tumbling thunder. The dreadful sound bellowed earthquakes in rupture, the horn’s tone split—gales pulverizing woods, whistling and moaning, a darkening came on storm clouds.

Image Source: Wikimedia Limp I faced the hill. Like a child, swung and the bells pealed. Above the road I looked onto a wheat field. The Farmer winnowed. The rope frayed into chaff blown away by the wind. The sun rose and the flies, biting, were devouring nails. Clouds swayed, turning black overhead. The arms of three trees curved into music’s bow. Innocent blood on a hill. By day the trees sat taught atop the hill, against the full rope, the braided melody hummed in lashes when the bow’s hair was pressed and drawn.

Image Source: Wikimedia I watched them work. Pickaxes swung down, rakes drug, shovels dug, wheelbarrows brimming with stone hauled for drowning in the bay; land softened for tilling and cultivating of seed. Ash flitted from iron drums placed on the farm’s paths lined by torrid, smoking barrel fires, which farmhands could not approach. “There is no need for the rubble,” the Farmer tasked his hired hands, “nor is there room for the weeds.

Image Source: Wikimedia From a distant town I’ve come traveling to work along dust and dirt trails at the City on the Mount. Walls overlooked the countryside, edifices laid before the horizon where the road slipped between the city’s gates into skies and clouds fading into golden hues. But I paused.  A dry flood swept across tilled fields, When had I entered these fertile rows? The field spanned from side to side, down the road, to the far-off hills behind, around the City and its gazing walls.