Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouette-of-field-during-sunrise-jYSsBkVezS4) 8. 11 .2024.
Field Work
The grass lies low now,
shaved by the tired hand
of a man who has forgotten
why he ever tended it.
I sit in the shade of this land,
where rows of stones mark
the places people once stood,
mark the places where we end.
In the barn, tools hang
rusted by the quiet of years—
the sickle unused, the hammer
a relic of work we no longer do.
You once told me the seasons
turn inside us,
that we carry the winters
and the summers in our bones,
but I no longer feel the thaw
or the ripening warmth of the sun.
It all seems distant now—
the way we knew the names
of every hill, every bend in the creek.
We used to walk through fields,
counting days like seeds,
waiting for something to bloom.
But the blooms have long gone brittle.
And the earth, once tender beneath our feet,
has hardened like stone.
I touch the soil—still, it remembers
the weight of all that was planted
and all that was never sown.
We linger, don’t we,
in places we have already left behind.
Quiet House
The windows have held their silence for years,
dust settling like snow on the sills—
a thickening, unbroken
layer of time I have never bothered to clear.
I once thought about painting the walls again,
but no brush can touch the years,
and nothing here speaks loudly enough
to warrant repair.
The kitchen still smells faintly of tea,
as if the kettle’s whistle
was enough to remind me
of things I had yet to do.
But what, in the end,
didn’t go unfinished?
Plates once stacked for two now sit forgotten,
and I find myself wondering
if anyone else will ever come
to wash them.
I turn the light off
before the evening fully arrives—
the kind of habit that forms
when you learn how to watch
a day fade without mourning.
Perhaps the loneliness
was never in the empty rooms,
but always here, in the refusal
to disturb them.
This is where I’ve stayed,
in the unremarkable stillness
of things that don’t demand
to be remembered.
The Last Chair
It’s always the smallest things—
the chair left out,
half-tucked beneath the table
as if someone might still return
to sit and finish what was started.
No one ever does.
The windows ache with the weight
of curtains pulled too tight,
blocking out a sky
that has never asked for forgiveness.
I think of pulling them open
but know that the sun
will only highlight
everything
I’ve left behind.
How quiet it becomes
when you stop waiting
for someone else
to make the first move.
The last chair stays where it is,
unmoved, unnoticed,
a monument to everything
we once believed mattered.
At Dusk, Along the River
I stand barefoot in the wet grass,
watching the river fold into itself,
darkness slipping between the rocks.
An old sycamore leans over the bank,
its branches, thin arms,
brushing the water like a tired hand.
In the distance,
a dog barks once,
then nothing.
The silence sits heavy,
settling on my shoulders
like a deep sleep.
A heron rises out of the reeds,
slow, deliberate,
its wings pushing against the thick air.
I follow its flight until it vanishes—
no trace left in the sky.
I am alone with the river now,
with the bending light
and the cool breath of evening.
There is no need to speak,
nothing to ask for.
Only the sound of the current,
pulling gently at the shore,
reminds me.
The Hours Settle in Quiet Places
The table holds its breath
as sunlight ripples across the surface,
mapping out an afternoon. A door creaks,
though no one is near it, and I think
this is how we drift through the hours:
slight turns in the air, unnoticed.
You’ve left your coat on the chair,
a small act of carelessness or trust.
The way it slouches reminds me
of those moments we forget our bodies exist,
when our minds float elsewhere,
tethered only by a thread we refuse to see.
Outside, the day makes no demands.
Clouds shuffle lazily across the sky
as if rehearsing lines for a play
they’ll never perform. The wind, too,
has settled into a rhythm of indifference,
brushing past leaves as if by accident.
I should say something,
something about how time feels heavier
when it’s filled with silence.
But the words lodge in my throat,
and we sit like this—two objects
in a room full of absence, waiting
for something to come
or nothing to change.
Perhaps this is how it always was—
the empty spaces between our thoughts
more telling than the thoughts themselves.
Perhaps we are always at the edge
of some great understanding,
but the wind keeps pushing us back,
reminding us that nothing is fixed,
not even this moment.
About the Author: Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years. He is an award-winning journalist and has been published in The Gilded Weathervane, Humana Obscura, The Lake Poetry, Loud Coffee Press, Lowestoft Chronicle, North of Oxford, October Hill Magazine, Passionfruit Review, Poetry Super Highway, The Raven Review, Rundelania, Shot Glass Journal, Star*Line, Superpresent Magazine, Wildsound Poetry, Writer's Digest, Written Tales, Young Ravens Literary Review.
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