I came across this poem when reading the Australian Book Review and had immediate rapport. Which is not always the case when reading poems within periodicals.
Big Meadow
Someone has left the day wide open here
But no one ever comes to mow the grass.
A man stands out of earshot, just a flash
Of red above the green and lemon stalks,
And then the sunlight spirits him away.
He's come, like us, to spend an afternoon
With daisies, butterflies, bull thistle spikes,
And lose his body in forgotten grass.
No talk when wading through this inland sea,
No need to name the milkweed, Queen Anne's lace,
No need to speak of lilies springing out
Like tigers from the track we roughly make
and unmake as we wander through the day,
No need to call the thorny locust out
Or tempt it with a fingertip. No need.
Words without eyelids come and look around
From in our heads and from those songs we love,
As afternoon grows sweet: air, cloud, and sky,
And then all settle down to flourish here,
Where grasses, trees and rocks step out of time
And leave us free to live inside the sun
That whispers, 'Come, rest in my golden breath,'
And half-imagine that we all can stretch
Ourselves like this throughout the years to come.
Some bumblebees dance round the bergamot.
My son is hidden in the thick long grass:
Not even the circling crow can see him now.
Kevin Hart (1954 -
When growing up as a child I spent much time walking and frequenting the local meadows. My father bought a corner section of a field to build a house. The rest of the field was used for cattle or growing wheat and even to this day remains the same. Taking our dog around the field for exercise was a regular activity. This is a poem that invokes that contentment of life feeling from within as I recall my childhood memories, including building a tree house in an adjoining oak and walking to the bottom of the field where there was a sloe tree.
The first line someone has left the day wide open invoked similar feeling when reading the opening words of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. When Mrs Dalloway opens the French doors to a June summer morning in England and thought – what a morning – fresh, as if issued to children on a beach. And I have pleasant memories of being so alive on a June morning in Hampshire and being in harmony with the countryside.
The meadow is a wildflower meadow where no one comes to mow the grass. A man loses his body in forgotten grass implies the meadow has been in such a state for many years. The plants and flowers are named allowing readers familar with English countryside to picture the meadow in specific detail. But the man actually walking in the meadow is totally oblivious of such identities. He is absorbed in the beauty of being in the now as he walks through the grasses; being at one with nature. Words without eyelids come and look around suggest there is nothing hidden from sight in his attentive absorption. And to live inside the sun gives the impression of taking resident within the sun joining the gift of brightness and warmth apart from indicating a sunny day.
It is a nice romantic thought that these moments in our lives can last forever – we all can stretch / Ourselves like this throughout the years to come
The absorption is emphasised in the last two lines My son is hidden in the thick long grass: / Not even the circling crow can see him now. There is also a subtle suggestion of personal loss apart from my thought at being lost in nature. Perhaps readers should think about the circling crow and what this implies.
From Wikipedia …
Kevin John Hart is an Anglo-Australian theologian, philosopher and poet. He is currently Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School. He was the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia.
my word in your ear 