The Last Poem

Most days here have a hawk in them,

Though each year I have to go farther

To find them, not fewer hawks (though

Perhaps that too) but fewer fields, this

Morning where once had always been

Several is one, veering after blackbirds

Scattering from the endless rows of corn

Where the For Sale sign has come down,

"106 acres +/-" and soon the machines

Will come not to harrow and plant but

Prepare the ground for row after row of

Things with shallower roots, a harvest

Of houses alike as ears of corn, furrows

Filled with concrete.

                                Now blackbirds escape,

The hawk pursues, and I am growing too old

To follow. In the end only hunger endures,

The hawk's and mine, different and the same,

His going on and mine staying,  Write every

Poem, Frost said, as though it were your last.





Poetry by countryfog
Read 674 times
Written on 2013-07-18 at 17:42

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Rob Graber
Making way for "things with shallower roots": need one add, people too? Pensive...
2013-07-19



Melancholy in all regards, but softly written.
2013-07-18



The last time I visited my childhood home it all looked different. A lot of the woods that provided an endless playground and natural museum for me were gone and fences were up everywhere. No doubt all this 'progress' has disrupted the flora and fauna there irrevocably.

I count myself so very lucky to have grown up in an area rife with birds, insects, plants, and all creatures both great and small. Human houses way too big and way too many. Perhaps indirectly it was a good thing that the 'real estate' crash happened.

Hopefully, this is by far not your last poem, but will continue to delight us with many, many more stories of wayward hawks and soaring blackbirds.
2013-07-18