Making Hay

Making Hay

This morning I woke
to fields of wildflowers
laid over in strips
The steady shift of
sickles moving quick quick
Leaves of Grass
cut and falling
Over in sheets of green.
I can scarcely bear the beauty
of this dying
This death that feeds life
this reaping of my heart

Remember a time when there was
a fawn hidden in the grass
And the machines kept drumming
And the machines kept singing
Their killing and gathering
and Unceasing songs
A life
So delicate and tenuous
gone with a shift of the blade.

. . .

For a while it will be morning
and I’ll sit with a cup of tea
Writing poems
Breathing slowly and Seeing
Each day with new eyes
the mist over the mountain
Preparing to meet the sun.

I see you standing in golden-green fields
Twisting grasses between your
calloused hands You always
said, It’s ready
before I thought it was time.

And true, dear heart,
There is a curing still to come. But directly,
Soon as the dew’s off,
I’ll meet you there.

~~ Ahna Leigh Fryhover