Red at the edges

I had a moment to spare.
I had to walk through a haphazard meadow
Of goldenrod, purple dock, and burr.
A tanager, her mate, and a few sparrows
Followed from shrub to shrub, one leaping
Just ahead of the other, over and over
Until for some reason they darted above
And across the meadow to
Immerse in a large stand of trees.
They clattered and rummaged about.
A power line strutted above and across the field.
In a clearing over the ridge of an old fence line
Another field opened in the late afternoon of cross light
Fully spaded with only a few scrub soy.
They stood like bristles up the back of a hog.
Again and again a bird, perhaps a hawk, cried out.

There were legions of trees.
The colors of this season were bursting with sunlight.
Each pigment now visible, radiant, and generous.
To a fault you could see for only a ways into the forest.
I knew the ash and the maple, I knew the oak and the beech.
The branches, the twigs, the limbs over limbs
But if there were trunks, there were too many leaves
And just too much color.
Then two deer leaped desperately away from attention,
Tails high, white as milk, like feathers to fly
Bounding to the furthest edge of the field
Settling into a casual walk at the rim of the woods.
A doe and a younger one, eye open
Over the shoulder, into the thicket,
When a red tail hawk screamed just overhead.
I was unable to capture it, to grasp its downy sides
To respect its ruddy color.

Over the line of treetops flew a jetliner
Red and black tail much like the hawk
Banking to the right as it flew toward
A city airport twenty miles a way.
Standing in the center of the field
I wanted to see in all directions
Where my feet pointed to a soy plant
Standing out of the furrowed ground.
The dry pods were laced with hairs
To collect dew with just a few days till frost.
A hawk cried out again.
A maple leaf in full red blush lay alone.
The stuff of air, and sun and wind bandied about
Dropped by the turn of earth
Blood red at the edges, the three major points,
And across the back.
Pink, like a cup, in the center.
Small harvest of a hiker, if you will.

^

Biography

These are the first poems that I have published. I teach 6th grade in Newark, Ohio. I am 49, and have a wife and three children. Some of the poets that I most appreciate are Milosz, Herbert, Montale, and Akhmatova. Irish poets are Kavanaugh, Boland, McGuckian. Newark is a small city, about 50,000 which is heavy industry, thus blue collar, and poor by U.S. standards, two rivers the Licking and Raccoon flow through and ancient giant geometrical Indian mounds have survived years of development, roads, canals, railroads. The mounds once covered the whole of the area. We are still blessed with beautiful rural areas throughout the county, at least to the east, north, and south. To the west is Columbus in process of building the largest mall in the world."