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The Pagan
By Les Blough

- Written about my father in the year of his death.  He was a farmer, whose most precious times were working in the fields, with his hands sifting through the dirt of our fields  and his own spirit - bent down in the hot sun, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and sometimes finding 'pagan stones' - Native-American flint and arrowheads. - Les Blough

THE PAGAN

Who met you there -

As you bent low in midday sun,

O'er ground so close to earth

That drew you into ancient holes,

Connecting with the old ones,

Who rocked and sighed

And spoke to you

Low words of wind and soil?

Who were those hairy ones -

Who led your weathered hands

And large cracked fingers

To sift those pagan stones

From holy sod and clay,

Whose visage painted dim

Upon the inner walls

Of your heaving cage

I know you knew them well.

It showed beneath your reddened brow

Through glazened telling pools of grey,

Reflecting caves down under,

Leading to Cretaceous times

Through unnumbered deaths

That only glow

When louder words are stopped

By silent voices

You alone could know.

~Les Blough

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