Margaret Peters Schwed
First frost. And after,
|
feathers and turds,
|
details dotted
|
on distant slope |
a kind of crop
|
once concealed by grass
|
weathering, wet now
|
in the wilt of fall. |
Now that is knocks
|
I know: I must feel
|
this carrying cold,
|
how the wind contracts |
summer's late sprawl
|
to a stark (too quick) |
dimming of day;
|
to dry fields aged |
past green, past gaudy
|
to the grays in brown. |
The hawk's dead hemlock
|
a haven for starlings;
|
wild turkeys too
|
take to the pine, |
their bodies bowing
|
the uppermost branches
|
where they sway and sag,
|
safe, fox-proof |
as the light, still live,
|
leaves this pasture. |
And if hoses harden
|
left on the hill, |
the wink of water
|
welling inside them,
|
bring them back,
|
bring them coiled |
to store until spring
|
when the simmer of bees |
| resumes—released |
from the ready hives. |
Maggie Schwed's poems have appeared in Raritan, Pleiades, Nimrod, Commonweal and Barrow Street, as well as in other magazines and anthologies. She has poems forthcoming in Western Humanities Review and Cider Press Review. Her first chapbook, Out of Season, was published this year with Finishing Line Press, and she reviews books of poems regularly for Pleiades. For the past three years, she has been learning to farm, first at Bobolink Dairy and now at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. She lives in New York City.