Outward — Summary

Dave BontaContemplative

weary with myself I watch the fields their leased light the fox at play

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

The speaker begins with a blunt admission: they are weary with themselves. It isn't tiredness from work or a long day, but a worn-out feeling about their own company, their own thoughts. Then the poem turns, as the title promises, outward. The speaker looks at the fields instead, and the poem becomes a short list of things seen.

The phrase "their leased light" is the strangest and most interesting moment. Light is something the fields only borrow, never own, and the word suggests that everything here is temporary, on loan. That may quietly echo the speaker's own sense of being passing and small. The last image, a fox at play, is simple and lively. The fox has no self-consciousness at all.

The mood is quiet, a little melancholy, but also relieved. Nothing is solved. The speaker just gets a break from themselves by paying attention to the world, and the poem lets that small mercy stand without explaining it.

Read also

More by Dave Bonta

All poems
ContemplativeDave Bonta

Plea bargain

I hear half a beat of drum to serve time have half a hope in the meantime praise God
DreamyDave Bonta

Cibola 3

I awake in the dark and shake free of sheets & blankets, of down-filled quilt. The rituals of waking– the long, hot shower, the coffee–give
ContemplativeDave Bonta

In good light

On a maple’s pale bark, a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks from a wandering snail? Green islands of moss