Poetry by Clare Best

Corn drier at Struggs Hill

We go there to stand with silence, the grain all in,
but the stillness won't say how it was
and you need to tell me what I never saw

how the big wheels rumbled across the yard,
how this roof seemed to hover
above the wide church of the store
as week after week
wheat fields, peas, barley were heaped inside
filling the concrete silos like cereal bowls.

You want me to know the shouts, the whistling chutes,
the makeshift percussion of conveyor belts.
You flick switches, engines shuffle and jerk,
you rack them up to speed
until we're sweating under striplights.
Acres of grain rattle over wire, gush
from metal ducts. Rough flour smogs the atmosphere.
A mouse burrows into corn and thistledown.

And once you're sure I've understood,
you turn off the machines,
colossal fans decelerate, stop.
Dust settles on our shoulders, in our hair.

We place our feet lightly down narrow wooden stairs
as if leaving children to sleep, and step out
hearing pheasant among the stubble.