With Apology To Frost

. . . for Jim

  

 

Once, and often, a brown bulk of shadow

Would move at the edge of the pasture

In the first light, horses still in the barn,

And a wedge of head and then shoulders

Would ease out of the darkness, following

The sun into the grass and wet white clover,

My neighbor's one cow he raised each year

Come again through the rickety fence gate

We shared, neither of us caring to repair it,

Caring more for allowing the cow its comings

And goings, knowing as it did not the one day

It would be led into the truck and slaughter.

Sometimes bad fences make good neighbors.

And now and here, miles and years apart,

Some heft and heave of heavy weight shifts

In the first light at the edge of the few pines

And the ground not mine, a presence I catch

Only in looking away, looking back at all the

Beautiful faces that looked up when I called.





Poetry by countryfog
Read 725 times
Written on 2013-08-15 at 17:47

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
And a wedge of head and then shoulders
Would ease out of the darkness, following
The sun into the grass and wet white clover

Wonderful!
2013-08-18



Though I didn't live on a farm when I grew up, many of the neighbors had cows. My mother used to insist that when a cow was removed from the pasture (or just died), the cows grieved, just like humans. You could hear the sadness in their moos.

Finely crafted poem.
2013-08-17


josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
There are NO apologies needed here!
2013-08-16



The last six line are an echo, gently suggested, beautifully written.

Frost captured our attention when we were young, he captures it now when we're slightly less young. I've always appreciated him for his darker side. But here you invoke his musing, philosophical, wry self. As always with Frost, there is more to it. He says of his neighbor:

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

You both write of shadows.

Thank you for dedicating this to me. I know something of fences and neighbors, and shadows, and poems.
2013-08-16



There is a Frost feel to it but of course there is something much more...it has a beautiful mellow which makes me actually see the light and the meadow.
It takes me back to my childhood when I used to go for early morning walks at first light through dewey grass:)
2013-08-16


Rob Graber
I have read, reread, enjoyed, and admired the first thirteen lines. (I would add that line 13 offers a kind of support for Frost, since the point of his great poem of course is not that good fences make good neighbors, but that indeed "Something there is that doesn't love a wall/ That wants it down.") But now I feel stupid: I do not understand the last six lines. Not a clue. Will you help me?
2013-08-15