Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

Moving to field and orchard, Ben names
the sapling fruit trees, remarks how few
will grow in this stingy-summered North.
Here it is order — next to the female tree
with its bridal blossoms, placed at a kind
but respectful distance, a male companion.
Down there, in the chaos of tangled wood,
blueberries thrust through inverted tree trunks,
wild flowers wait for the inadvertent bee,
things grow because they must,
as if by accident.
In this new orchard, and the measured garden
from which, an unapprenticed sorceress,
Hannah can fill her bounteous table,
there is a balanced order. The sun,
defying the thermodynamics of entropy,
provides the energy, the man and woman
the order, the choices, the impetus.
We turn,
and crossing the knee-high grass of the field
we are transfixed as a feathered shape
leaps down from a twisted shard of tree.
Amazed but curious, we circle it,
find a great owl with wings unfurled,
staring us down, holding a circle of ground
as a warning. No less surprised than we,
it turns its head in an impossible arc
to register the whole horizon of us.
We walk away. The curve of hill,
the sweep of grass, conceal us.