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A wide gate swings open . . .
The hip-high grass children hid in
only two days ago has been mown.
Wade through the gold-leafed waves,
the rose-headed clover; walk
the shadowy edge of the field.
Over this river of cut grass
a sparrow hawk circles. The sun
blurs your footsteps in this world.
Walk out again when the sun
burns down the sky and the blue
sharpness of daylight is a white haze
on the hills. That fragrance you breathe
is the heart of the seed split open.
Press firmly on this green earth,
this sea of life you tread on.
Something will spring alive in you
and root down.
Charles Fishman is director of the Distinguished Speakers Program at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, where he previously directed the Visiting Writers Program for eighteen years. His books include Mortal Companions, The Firewalkers, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and The Death Mazurka, which was selected by the American Library Association as one of the outstanding books of the year (1989) and nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His eighth chapbook, Time Travel Reports, was published by Timberline Press in Fall 2002.
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