Tanka II
Through the eyes of life
I looked in at my own heart:
A long furrowed field
Grown cement waiting for seed
Baking in desolation.
Poems on the topic: field
Poems on the topic “field” on Poets.by.
Three Colts Exercising in a Six-Acre
Three colts exercising in a six-acre,
A hilly sweep of unfenced grass over the road.
What a picture they make against the skyline!
Necks stretched, hocks moving royally, tails flying;
Farm-lads up, and they crouching low on their withers.
I have a journey to go--
A lawyer to see, and a paper to sign in the Tontine--
But I slacken my pace to watch them.
All that I was I am
Hateful it seems now, yet was I not happy?
Starved of the things I loved, I did not know
I loved them, and was happy lacking them.
If bitterness comes now (and that is hell)
It is when I forget that I was happy,
Accusing Fate, that sits and nods and laughs,
Because I was not born a bird or tree.
Let accusation sleep, lest God's own finger
Point angry from the cloud in which He hides.
Who may regret what was, since it has made
Himself himself? All that I was I am,
And the old childish joy now lives in me
At sight of a green field or a green tree.
Home
A burst of sudden wings at dawn,
Faint voices in a dreamy noon,
Evenings of mist and murmurings,
And nights with rainbows of the moon.
And through these things a wood-way dim,
And waters dim, and slow sheep seen
On uphill paths that wind away
Through summer sounds and harvest green.
This is a song a robin sang
This morning on a broken tree,
It was about the little fields
That call across the world to me.
Harvest
They are mowing wheat
Through the heavy days;
Through the silent heat
They are mowing wheat;
Flat fields retreat
Into shrouding haze;
They are mowing wheat
Through the heavy days.
Autumn Fields
He said his legs were stiff and sore
For he had gone some twenty-eight miles,
And he'd walked through by watergaps
And fences and gates and stiles.
He said he'd been by Logan's woods,
And up by Walton's branch and Simms,
And there were sticktights on his clothes
And little dusts of seeds and stems.
And then he sat down on the steps,
And he said the miles were on his feet.
For some of that land was tangled brush,
And some was plowed for wheat.
The rabbits were thick where he had been,
And he said he'd found some ripe papaws.
He'd rested under a white oak tree,
And for his dinner he ate red haws.
The Fields Are Full
The fields are full of summer still
And breathe again upon the air
From brown dry side of hedge and hill
More sweetness than the sense can bear.
So some old couple, who in youth
With love were filled and over-full,
And loved with strength and loved with truth,
In heavy age are beautiful.
Mariposa
Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.
All the things we ever knew
Will be ashes in that hour,
Mark the transient butterfly,
How he hangs upon the flower.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Suffer me to cherish you
Till the dawn is in the sky.
Whether I be false or true,
Death comes in a day or two.
In Bondage
I would be wandering in distant fields
Where man, and bird, and beast, lives leisurely,
And the old earth is kind, and ever yields
Her goodly gifts to all her children free;
Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding,
And boys and girls have time and space for play
Before they come to years of understanding--
Somewhere I would be singing, far away.
For life is greater than the thousand wars
Men wage for it in their insatiate lust,
And will remain like the eternal stars,
When all that shines to-day is drift and dust
But I am bound with you in your mean graves,
O black men, simple slaves of ruthless slaves.
My Mother
Reg wished me to go with him to the field,
I paused because I did not want to go;
But in her quiet way she made me yield
Reluctantly, for she was breathing low.
Her hand she slowly lifted from her lap
And, smiling sadly in the old sweet way,
She pointed to the nail where hung my cap.
Her eyes said: I shall last another day.
But scarcely had we reached the distant place,
When o’er the hills we heard a faint bell ringing;
A boy came running up with frightened face;
We knew the fatal news that he was bringing.
I heard him listlessly, without a moan,
Although the only one I loved was gone.
The dawn departs, the morning is begun,
The trades come whispering from off the seas,
Memoranda
This handful of grass, brown, says little. This quarter
mile field of it, waving seeds ripening in the
sun, is a lake of luminous firefly lavender.
Prairie roses, two of them, climb down the sides of
a road ditch. In the clear pool they find their
faces along stiff knives of grass, and cat-tails
who speak and keep thoughts in beaver brown.
These gardens empty; these fields only flower ghosts;
these yards with faces gone; leaves speaking as
feet and skirts in slow dances to slow winds; I
turn my head and say good-by to no one who
hears; I pronounce a useless good-by.
A Black Man Talks of Reaping
I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
I scattered seed enough to plant the land
In rows from Canada to Mexico
But for my reaping only what the hand
Can hold at once is all that I can show.
Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
My brother’s sons are gathering stalk and root,
Small wonder then my children glean in fields
They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.
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