Wheel off the wagon, mind running
through grasses turning brown around
little spots of color, eyes combing
the deep meander of yesterday’s cows
and calves in crooked furrows like earth
laid back in waves of stems and heavy
heads, parted in passing, brush of bellies
grazing—a mouthful left, here and there.
No man I knew as a boy would look
for flowers, would take or waste those times
when the sun raced days across the sky.
Some things were never true, never
considered, yet I am consumed, bending
closer to purple faces before they die,
stepping around happy families smiling
upwards, short-lived clusters beneath
a sea of grasses as my own looks down
at what’s become of their wild seed.






Splendor in the grass, glory in the flower — what poverty never to be enriched by them, what wealth for those who see! Thanks for sharing these treasures!
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Thanks, Laurie, for sharing a part of Wordsworth’s lovely Ode, ‘INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD’ privately, I reprint your email here:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
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