Hay-harvested three, four weeks
and overnight it seems
gone green again. Mowing:
two rows of rolled hay done,
and machines in the near field
cut, roll, move each fragile burden
(promised to cows, horses, winter)
near to far, one by one.
Two days and the mower stops,
rests among the fallen.
Now they are mowing again
further up the road.
Sparrows start from tall grass,
crack up like sparks, like old rocks suddenly struck.
Red-winged blackbirds, from long practice, settle
on cattail inflorescence.
Thrushes grab the stems of Timothy,
(left from a previous intrusion)
riding out the undulations.
Swallows — bank and barn — flash,
goldfinches shift light here and there.
Bobolinks simply move on
finding the uncut field.
All these rearrange their days, their lives
as fields go down to more than wind and rain.
We watch them scatter,
circle the mowers,
speaking only to each other.
To call their calling grief
is yet another theft.
—
Sydney Landon Plum is a retired Adjunct Professor from the English Department of the University of Connecticut, after more than 20 years teaching. Solitary Goose, her essays about life near a small pond, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2007. At UConn, she co-chaired the committee establishing a major in Environmental Studies. She continues to wrestle with essential questions in writing about nature in her new environment in Northeastern Ohio.
