Saturday, April 17, 2021

The Plow / Raymond Holden


The Plow

I thought the white patch on the Eastern hill
Was surely snow. I watched it and it stirred,
And even the drifted uplands lost the chill
They had been blowing downward and a bird
Flashed blue and there were others which I heard.

The patch of snow moved with a man behind,
And furrows on the hillside rippled brown.
The Winter went like water from my mind
And the misty April sun came faintly down
And I forgot the road which leads to town.

I was not anything but one desire
To follow in the wake of the billowy blade
With wind and water and my kind of fire –
To cleave the fallow hillside and invade
Young earth and rise up glad and unafraid.

~~
Raymond Holden (1894-1972)
from Granite and Alabaster, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]

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