Larry Smith: "Walking a Field into Evening"

For learned books, I read the grasses.
For reputation, a bird calls my name.
I cross a stone bridge with the pace of dusk.
At the meadow gate, six cows meditate.

For decades I ran my mind up hill and down;
now idleness tells me what is near.
An arrow of wild geese crosses the sky,
my body still, my feet firm on the ground.

We age like trees now, watch our seedlings
take wind or grow around us.
I’m going to mark my books lightly
with a pencil. When someone wants
to take my picture, I’ll walk towards them
and embrace.

                         No more arguments,

just heart sense, or talk about nothing.
Take long walks in the woods at dawn and dusk,
breathe in the damp musty air,
learn to listen before I die.

"Walking a Field into Evening" by Larry Smith, from Lake Winds: Poems (Bottom Dog Press, 2014). © Larry Smith. Presented here by poet submission.

View a poem video in the poet's voice and with his musical accompaniment.

Art credit: "Cows in meadow," photograph by Bill Tam.

Larry Smith: "In Early Spring"

Road catkins, russet and tan, let the
wind sweep over them as dusk
seeps in along the lake,
and I pass road puddles
swelling to ponds, mirroring
the sky's own silveriness.
At the railroad tracks seven geese
veer off and set down in a field
so that only their necks
speak for them, telling us all
to go on while they rest
by the barn. Today a man
asked me if I were depressed,
and I looked up and smiled.
No more than these geese or catkins
as light falls around them, no
more than those pine boughs
lifting in the wind—just so,
life goes on.

"In Early Spring" by Larry Smith, from A River Remains (WordTech Editions, 2006). © Larry Smith. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: "Seven Geese Leaving," photograph taken September 11, 2007, by Yakographer.