The Deer Meadow

The locals think I’m crazy,

re-seeding by hand,

but no one will lend us a tractor

with a three-point hitch.

Machinery’s useless anyway

for wild grass seed tangled

with bits of stems, leaves and forb corollas

that clog the drill.

The week you lie paralyzed

on a white bed in a white curtained stall,

I pace the pasture you call

the deer meadow—

pioneering in reverse, shuttling across

the once tallgrass prairie,

scattering the russet seeds in an arc

for the coltish wind.

Potpourri of wine bronze gold gathered

at Big Creek and Redfeather,

with names like the poppling song

of the mockingbird—

Tahoka daisy, goldstem grass, dropseed,

turkey foot grass, bastard toadflax,

dame’s rocket, downy sunflower, hoary puccoon,

blanketflower, rocket larkspur.

No compass plant to guide me

through the maze of corridors,

no rattlesnake-master to vanquish

the tumor swallowing your spine.

Between bouts of rain,

poison ivy, thorns,

and the lopped off stalks of goldenrod,

I stride the scalp shorn field—

dragging fifty-pound bags of chopped hay,

each handful light as fuzzy hair,

clinging to the chaff, blanketing the beds

trampled by deer.

There is an intimacy in this slow spreading,

time to find a meadowlark nest

that survived the mower, its single speckled egg

unbroken.

Space to discover, beyond the chemical waste

of corn fields and hog lots,

below the wreck and rubble, a rhapsody

of chocolate hearts

pressed into the dark and yielding mud,

a duet of the delicate

cloven feet of the cinnamon doe

tap dancing at dawn.

In your deer meadow the wind-borne seed

will sprout from its safe

confining shell, raising a tender green

alleluia.

As I drop the last clinging seed

on the bare fallow ground,

your fluttering heart emerges

from a mantle of wildflowers.