Setting seed in autumn

Beautiful Monday morning in autumn here, guineafowl running around the garden leaving tracks in the dew. Had a session yesterday evening with my writers’ group (some of whom actually write!) and we each wrote 500 words and then critted the writing (kindly but truthfully). Then ate bowls of lentil soup and talked about the Big Novel That Got Away.

The bronze fennel is running to seed, the fine grassy seeds are flying back and forth, the mousebirds carry away elderberries thick with tiny seeds. As if by chance I come in from the flyaway wind-blown garden and find this poem by Californian poet Peter Everwine:

Back from the Fields

Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,

looking for God knows what.

Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.

Something to fill an empty spot.

Maybe a luminous angel

or a country girl with a secret dark.

He came back empty-handed,

or so I thought.

Now I find them:

thistles, goatheads,

the barbed weeds

all those with hooks or horns

the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones

those wearing lantern jaws,

old ones in beards, leapers

in silk leggings, the multiple

pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those

with juices and saps

like the fingers of thieves

nation after nation of grasses

that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds

and grab handholds

in whatever lean place.

It’s been a good day.

 

Unable to find a credit for the guineafowl artist –

About these ads