Ploughman's Lunch

The light dapples his carthouse
muscles as we rest in the shade
of a great oak. There are no clouds;
fields spread out, egg-yellow patches,
ripple in the heat. Unfolding
a pokerdot cloth I hand out lunch.
He is silent as he devotes his
attention to filling his mouth
with the usual harvest fair offered.

He holds a green apple in his coarse
hands etched with scars, flayed
and broken by the biting plough.
His red face is poked with scratches
and the sweat of the sun's scolding.
His body is hard, riveted like a conch,
toughened by molluscan genesis,
as ambition callously encrusted his youth,
to see we were never short of bread.

SM