Harvesters

There will be nothing^___not the light dust stirred
Into the semblance of their wistful feet;
No rumorous tale the dawn wind overheard
Of shapes that moved among dim sheaves of wheat,^___
There will be nothing when the husbandmen
Return, to hint of such as come to keep
Tryst with old dreams in summer fields again,
Remembering harvests that were theirs to reap.

And they who till these acres have no way
Of knowing how precarious and frail
Is tenure that at any twilight may
Revert to ghostly claimants, by entail;
Nor how, at harvest-time, these take a yield,
Weightless as dream, from field on darkened field

^__Margaret Perkins Briggs

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 25
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)