Poem: Selling the Farm

SELLING THE FARM

Clouds have descended to lie
with the valley. They rub
their soft bellies on the budding
grasses, lick boughs in the woodlands
harbor the bush in moisture.

The land delivers itself
—supine giant limbs spread
to sky to my eyes as I wake
in the weeping wet, startled

to have the vast spread of blue
the green earth, laid out so,
a moment—despite a future
abandonment of meadow.

This article appears in May 2010.