Message on a Wire

There is a stillness in your field.
Not a silence,
(for the mistle-thrush sings
on the topmost bough of the hawthorn)
and the beck finds its voice
as it slips over the stones
into the south meadow.)
But a stillness
from long ago
when the stone walls were built,
when the grass was sown
and peppered with wild flowers
in their season.

One day in July
the stillness would be broken.
The grass would be mown,
tossed, dried in the sun, smelt
and carted away to the stack.
Then the stillness would return.

Men who care for fields
feel that stillness,
soak it into their bones,
become that stillness,
protected, cocooned,
within the confines of their walls.

I walked across your field today.
I could leave a message
on your answer-phone.

Or I could leave
two buttercups,
a herb-robert,
and a cuckoo-flower
tied with a strand of grass,
hung on the electric fence.

Either way, you will know.....