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.