The meadow's a dream I'm working to wake to. The real river flows under the river. The real river flows Over the river. Three fishermen in yellow slickers Stitch in and out of the willows And sometimes stand for a long time, facing the water, Thinking they are not moving. * Thoughts akimbo Or watching the West slip through our hopes for it, We're here with hay down, Starting the baler, and a thunderhead Stands forward to the east like a grail of milk. * The sky is cut out for accepting prayers. Believe me, it takes them all. Like empty barrels afloat in the trough of a swell The stupid bales wait in the field. The wind scatters a handful of yellow leaves With the same sowing motion it uses for snow. * After this we won't be haying anymore. Lyle is going to concentrate on dying for a while And then he is going to die. The tall native grasses will come ripe for cutting And go uncut, go yellow and buckle under snow As they did before for thousands of years. Of objects, the stove will be the coldest in the house. The kitchen table will be there with its chairs, Sugar bowl, and half-read library book. The air will be still from no one breathing. * The green of the meadow, the green willows, The green pines, the green roof, the water Clear as air where it unfurls over the beaver dam Like it isn't moving. * In the huge secrecy of the leaning barn We pile the bodies of millions of grasses, Where it's dark as a church And the air is the haydust that was a hundred years. The tin roof's a marimba band and the afternoon goes dark. Hay hooks clink into a bucket and nest. Someone lifts his boot to the running board and rests. Someone lights a cigarette. Someone dangles his legs off the back of the flatbed And holds, between his knees, his hands, As if they weighed fifty pounds. @3Forever@1 comes to mind, and peaks where the snow stays. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RAIN ON A GRAVE by THOMAS HARDY HEART'S-EASE by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR AT BETHLEHEM: 1. THE CHILD by JOHN BANISTER TABB THE STREET OF THE MANY LITTLE LOVERS by MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT THREE EPISTLES TO G. LLOYD ON A PASSAGE FROM HOMER'S ILIAD: 1 by JOHN BYROM THIRD BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 19 by THOMAS CAMPION TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. SURELY THE TIME WILL COME by EDWARD CARPENTER |