Gone

[pjthompson]

Gone

Soft sighing of breezes in the tall grass,
soughing of the wind in the millet stalks,
cascade of wind chimes, the mourning of doves,
seed heads scattering in a shattering of wings.

The palm's fronds bend and raise and bend
performing a ritual to life—a tiny life,
creeping and sighing all around and
in the clustering of fronds at its crown.

Far across the field, the dog barks,
quieting the sighing and the creeping,
but not for long. Life is insistent: a chittering
of sparrows battling, a fierce squeaking of mice.

All this life, all this quiet noise,
gone, gone, forced on,
to other fields where wreckers have not reached,
and big diggers leave the earth unturned,
where only small burrowing things disturb the soil—
far, far away from here.

—PJ Thompson

Comments

[sartorias]

Song of the city indeed.

[pjthompson]

Yep. My childhood neighborhood had open fields on both sides of our house. That, of course, could not be allowed to continue.

[mount_oregano]

The world is too noisy with us, late and soon, getting and spending... (as Wordsworth may have said, inspire by your poem).

[pjthompson]

Indeed it is. I think about how nature reclaimed many urban spaces during the pandemic without those noisy, boorish humans around. :)