Locked out of childhood, his spirit walks
A field of bare dirt—no trees, no grass,
Not even the harvest’s leftover stalks—
A field where nothing comes to pass,
That long abnormal rains make muddy,
A tract the local wildlife shuns,
Where nothing is ever laid to rest
A place by which no known road runs,
No star in the east and in the west
Grey sundowns that once were ruddy.
Jene Erick Beardsley was born and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. He graduated from the University of Illinois with an MA in English Literature, and taught poetry at a small college in the Philadelphia suburbs for over thirty-five years. His poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Amherst Review, Sojourners, Fulcrum, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Green Mountains Review, Lullwater Review, South Carolina Review, Ibbetson Street Press, New Ohio Review, California Quarterly, Tribeca Review, New Letters, and many others. beardsley.wordpress.com