Pastoral

by Steven Croft

around a weathered barn, red-brown skeletons
of farm equipment

clapboard house, girl at window with crazy eyes
lifts the sash, dreams of leaving

wind plays with clothesline, rings a porch dinner bell,
lifts dust shooing a chicken

In the distance a storm rising over crop fields
and copses of pine bruises the sky

rumbles and threatens

An Army veteran, Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Sky Island Journal, So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Poets Reading the News, Gyroscope Review, San Pedro River Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and other places, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.