After the Rain

After the rain, it’s time to walk the field

again, near where the river bends. Each year

I come to look for what this place will yield –

lost things still rising here.

The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail,

a crop of arrowheads, but where or why

they fall is hard to say. They seem, like hail,

dropped from an empty sky,

Yet for an hour or two, after the rain

has washed away the dusty afterbirth

of their return, a few will show up plain

on the reopened earth.

Still, even these are hard to see –

at first they look like any other stone.

The trick to finding them is not to be

too sure about what’s known;

Conviction’s liable to say straight off

this one’s a leaf, or that one’s merely clay,

and miss the point: after the rain, soft

furrows show one way

Across the field, but what is hidden here

requires a different view – the glance of one

not looking straight ahead, who in the clear

light of the morning sun

Simply keeps wandering across the rows,

letting his own perspective change.

After the rain, perhaps, something will show,

glittering and strange.