A Farm in Virginia near the North Carolina Boundary

The shadow of a grass blade falls upon the worm.
A blue-tailed skink slips in under the door.
This is life as lived on a southern farm
with fruit trees (apple orchard; fig and pear).
Scarlet tanagers let themselves be seen
from time to time. Rabbits and deer devour
the season's garden. Bees linger at the screen.
Some days the sky is low and seems to lower,
and others blue, with clouds a rickrack trim,
or black with blowing rain that stills and hushes
the birds while large-mouth bass and turtles swim
in the muddy-bottomed pond; rain rattles bushes.
It's busy here; a lot is going on
most all the time and now and then scarlet
tanagers, bright baubles in the morning sun,
and shy despite the gaudy garb of harlot,
fly by, a pair; house wrens flock at the feeder.
The bees that fumble at the sill will swarm.
A cardinal relaxes in a cedar.
This is life on a small southeastern farm.
A blue-tailed skink slips out under the door.
The shadow of a grass blade crosses the worm.

Kelly Cherry

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Kelly Cherry is the author of seventeen books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (criticism, memoir, and essay), including the poetry collections God's Loud Hand, Death and Transfiguration, and Rising Venus. Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she lives with her husband on a small farm in Virginia.

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RL