Country Cart

Again with the difficult words at Poefusion: birse, jounce, sike, throstle, griseous. I had to look up three of them.

Given a choice, I think I'd use "grizzled" rather than "griseous". It has a similar sound, and lists as a synonym.

I think of this as a vignette from a Thomas Hardy novel; it has that feel, and the slightly archaic words seem to fit. Could develop into a longer poem.

Throstles sing in the hedgerows
while the cart jounces over dike and sike.
The driver's beard, griseous
and birsey as gorse. Hands oak-root gnarled.
Old horse. Old man. Old country lane,
close to earth under a wide and unforgiving sky.

Update:

Throstles sing in the hedgerows
while the cart jounces over dike and sike.
The driver's hands, oak-root gnarled.
Beard, birsey as gorse,
grizzled like the weathered wood
of the cottage on the hill.

Red blossoms at the edge of the roof:
flowers or flames? An old man with eyes
blue as the wide and unforgiving sky
drives an old horse down an old country lane
and doesn't turn back
when the fire bell rings.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside