Field in Spring

Your eye moving

left to right across

the plowed lines

looking to touch down

on the first

shoots coming up

like a frieze

from the dark where

pale roots

and wood-lice gorge

on mold.

Red haze atop

the far trees.

A two dot, then

a ten dot

ladybug. Within

the wind, a per-

pendicular breeze.

Hold a mirror,

horizontal,

to the rain. Now

the blurred repetition

of ruled lines, the faint

green, quickening,

the doubled tears.

Wake up.

The wind is not for seeing,

neither is the first

song, soon half-

way gone,

and the figures,

the figures are not waiting.

To see what is

in motion you must move.

Credit

Copyright © 2015 by Susan Stewart. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 30, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“This poem is from a series of studies of the same field in sequential seasons. Is there anyone in the northern hemisphere who isn’t trying, in these days, to read the signs of spring?”
Susan Stewart