Three Poems by Daril Bentley

Around Troupsburg

The night unwinds its skein
of silver-blue wool around the moon
and trains its face to glow
upon the lonely Amish barn roof
and the silent silo.

The merciful day
drapes its yellow throw
from Smucker’s Rise to Jericho Hill
across the husky rolling shoulders
holding the fallen beyond the horizon.

Little wonder these caretakers
of hoe and horse plow hold with a will
greater than their own—
its infinite tenderness and pity;
its correction.

They give thanks at noon
for hay-bale walls built of the sun.
At night they pray
for rainfall upon the dry stacked stone
in the hollows of the city.

Crescent Moon

Looking up where stars are hewn
into an ebony height,
I seem to recall from I don’t know when

This silver seed strewn
across a black-slate millhouse floor—
with an ivory-bladed sickle hung

On a nail beside an ancient granary door
that opens now and then
to reveal a widening wedge of light

Dispersed across this field of men,
who gather in at night
against their fears their wondering young.

Winnowing the Fields

In sweet spring rains
farmers sow—
and through the spring and summer under
cathedral sunlight
those sown grains grow.

And then fields
ripen to brown—
and the cowl brown of autumn’s stained-glass torpor
broken in an instant
is cut down.

The grain is winnowed
of its chaff—
and the chaff goes with the wind,
and the wind
and the winnowing laugh

To see our children
off to war.
The merciless flails have uncounted harvests sinned—
and still the winds of winters
howl for more.

Daril’s latest collection, The Box, was published by Outskirts Press in 2021 and is available here.

Learn more about Daril on our Contributors’ Page.

(Photo: William Garrett/ flickr.com/ CC BY-ND 2.0)

Introducing the 2023 Best in Rural Writing Contest. $300 in prizes, as well as great exposure for shortlisted authors. Deadline: September 30th, 2023. For more details go here.

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Daril Bentley

Daril Bentley is author of several books of poetry and numerous poems published in journals in the U.S. and abroad. He has been a semifinalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, a finalist for the New Mexico Book Award for Poetry, and recipient of an Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest International Book Award. He is also a Black Mountain Press "The 64 Best Poets" Series author. A bird conservationist, he makes his home in Elmira, NY.