PATCHWORK

 

Because it's harvest season:

PATCHWORK

Gleaming fields of ripening grain

nurtured by the sun and rain

swaying in the breeze:

oats, corn, soybeans, peas,

wheat, barley, silage, clover,

timothy or alfalfa.

Yellows, greens, and browns.

Patchwork on the ground.

Fit together to form a whole

by several hardworking souls.

Squared corners or curved

filling in the grooves.

Golden oats shimmering.

In the breeze sashaying.

Music is made

then comes the blade

to shock into piles

mile after mile.

Parcels of soybeans and peas

where bees buzz and stop to tease

pollinating

the blossoms

waiting to mature and age

in fields of green foliage.

In the plot over there leaps

tasseled corn ready to reap.

Planted in straight rows.

Eight feet high it grows.

When the frost comes down

the stalks will turn bronze.

Flaxen heads of wheat

soaking in the heat.

Kernels gleaned in the sun one day will make flour

after combining hour after hour.

Up, down, and around

from sun up to sun down.

Down the road a stretch

more grains for market.

Glistening with dew

under skies of blue

or tawny-gold becomes

under the setting sun.

As far as the eye can see

are fields of green barley.

Squared off into acres, the fields

will produce a bumper yield.

Bordered by a black ribbon road

leading to market where sold.

Miles and miles of acres

waiting to be sun-cured

after seeds were planted

and the good Lord watered

form patchwork pieces gathered together

joined by family, friends, and neighbors.

Several acres of clover, timothy,

alfalfa ready for baling early

under the noonday sun

right up until sundown.

This parcel owned by generations

of farmers making a living.

There's a tract of pumpkins

turning orange before harvesting

next to a cornfield where a maze

will soon confuse and amaze.

You might even buy maize

with kernels of gold and maize.

Patches sewn together by hedges or creeks

or babbling brooks which quietly speak.

Patchwork pieces of greens and golds

or brown when the earth is unfurled;

there are squares and rectangles,

and irregular triangles.

All these pieces together make a whole,

even the ones containing a fishing hole.

All have a purpose, these patches, of earth

waiting to nurture and new birth bring forth.

Next time you see a furrowed field planted,

look to see patchwork. You'll be enchanted.

* * * * *

Patchwork earth neatly arrayed.

Patchwork lives from disarray.

Patchwork overalls from tears.

Patchwork everyone wears.

Patchwork puts back together

what has come untethered.

Rather lives or acres,

patchwork holds a cure.

Acres planted with grains

comes to life again.

Lives patch-worked back together

grow healthier and stronger.

Patchwork neatly forms

a beautiful new form

for pieces are stitched making something new

out of rips and tears and furrows, who knew?

Patchwork makes whole

what used to be holes.

The pieces of your life form a whole

where joys and sorrows daily flow.

In the end someone beautiful is formed

like unmatched patchwork pieces being sewn.

All together more pleasing than plain,

the patchwork of our lives made right again.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

When a farmer plows for planting,

does he plow continually?

Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?

When he has leveled the surface,

does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin?

Does he not plant wheat in its place,

barley in its plot, and spelt in its field?

His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.

Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,

nor a cartwheel rolled over cumin;

caraway is beaten out with a rod,

and cumin with a stick.

Grain must be ground to make bread;

so one does not go on threshing it forever.

Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it,

his horses do not grind it.

All this also comes from Lord Almighty,

wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.

Isaiah 28:24-29

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return to it without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater.

Isaiah 55:10

Life Is a Garden Party

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