The Turn of the Meadow

I've come to where the hay field ends,

and the land falls away in a long slope.

My feet feel the change in the ground,

a softer ground, with wild grasses now,

and the yellow of buttercups.

The sun is high and casts no shadow,

and the heat holds a kind of stillness

that makes a man stop,

just to feel the world stand still.

Behind me, the last of the bales are stacked

in long, golden rows. I know that work.

I know the smell of sun-dried hay,

the feel of it on my hands.

Ahead, the world is a different green,

a tangle of clover and ferns,

leading down to a stream I cannot see.

I hear its sound, a low faint sound,

a promise of moving water.

I stand here between the known and the unknown,

between the labor and the leaving.

There's a pull to both sides,

a memory in the warmth on my shoulders

and a beckoning in the sound below.

I have a mind to turn and go back,

but the feeling is stronger here,

the feeling of standing on a line

that separates one thing from another.