Yesterday's Gristmill

Sometimes, I can hear that happy, bubbly brook bouncing over stones and under the wheel…that giant wheel. It would drone along groaning a wooden song; each night luring the brassy sun ever toward a distant skyline by soft chattering of cog on cog and mesmerizing clockwork. Other times I’m haunted by the gritty rasp of stone on stone and swirling tendrils of fine dust doing a serpentine dance through heavy air, reaching like so many ghoulish fingers grasping desperately before dissolving; coating my memories and that dusty wood-planked floor. Yesterday I yearned for simpler times when I would lazily strum my second-hand guitar from a mossy log in the shade of our old gristmill. Plucking those plaintive songs of young heartache or gleefully accompanying cardinals in a nearby thicket. But today all that remains is corporate. Steel rollers chain driven by diesel motors. A dried up creek bed cutting an over-burdened field of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to grow everything but food for my soul. 6/3/2018 Written for The Gristmill Poetry Contest Hosted by Craig Cornish