Field Report: April

Quid faciat laetes segetes, quo sidere terram vetere . . .

"What must be done to bring a heavy harvest,
under which stars to turn the earth . . ."
—Virgil, Georgics I

i

Mulching garlic: muck is heavy.
Everything is brown or gray.

Moving grasses, haying sprouts:
Cold knobs rise, ache in my fingers.

ii

In this field not Pyrrah's bones or Deucalion's
but human remains:

no war
                                  (though even here farmers dig up old weapons)—

no helmets,
though while we work, the radio

broadcasts poppy harvests and bombings,
limbs shattering in another country—

In our field today:
              a lost child's sunglasses.

iii

Hot. Cold. Then a too-warm spell:
navies of clouds come and go, come and go—

windstorms, birds
—all north too soon.

In the greenhouse
we plant nightshades,

tomatoes & cucumbers:
stage summer plenty while

the radio announces
dead seals in Labrador—

above us rose-throated grosbeak return
from Tulum, from Oaxaca, those borderless migrants.

iv

Across the hemisphere, farmers start the old art.
Bow into broccoli.

Push machines or their bodies.
Plant starts or seed.

Buy oil for tractors. Cross borders. Spray pesticides.
Virgil wrote by which signs shall we know?

We too are small against great constellations.
We plant when the sun shines. We augur & pray.





From Work & Days (Red Hen Press, 2016). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.