Buckwheat

This smell of home and honey on the breeze, This shimmer of sunshine woven in white and pink That comes, a dream from memory’s visioned brink, Sweet, sweet and strange across the ancient trees,-- It is the buckwheat, boon of the later bees, Its breadths of heavy-headed bloom appearing Amid the blackened stumps of this high clearing, Freighted with cheer of comforting auguries.

But when the blunt, brown grain and red-ripe sheaves, Brimming the low log barn beyond the eaves, Crisped by the first frost, feel the thresher’s flail, Then flock the blue wild-pigeons in shy haste All silently down Autumn’s amber trail, To glean at dawn the chill and whitening waste.