Fifty

a lovely upturned face already starred with green

Photo: © David Whyte

Fifty

New mown,
the great pale gold
stretch of field
revealed beneath
the absent barley
like a lovely upturned face
already starred with green
from the clover
growing to replace it --
and with the harvest done,
the mower parked
and the field
left to silence,
the dogs bound happily
in the cleared space
while Patrick stands,
head thrown back
in laughter by the gate.

Sometimes we are surprised
by the steal and turn
of beauty
through a working life,
the ruffling wind
stirring the barley
behind backs
bent in worldly concentration,
thinking we had planted
just to eat and sell,
forgetting the way things
meet and conspire
round the focused endeavor.

That daughter
standing with us
we thought we knew,
grown into womanhood
while the field is sown,
or a partner’s face,
harvest within harvest,
softened by age
our eyes renewed
by a sudden
and unfamiliar, familiar.

And then this new mown field
close to the house
stretched away now
to some
horizon
beyond all attempt
to bring one year
to a recognized harvest.

And no end time now
looking at the cleared field,
no time at all
but time as if collapsed
and concentrated
around us,
stunning us to quiet
through the hush and light
of absence itself,
the gold wave of barley
come and gone,
the cutting away of the ripe
and ready to go
revealing beneath
like a breath not taken,
like a thought not fully made,
like the year ahead
not yet lived,
the minted
clover,
green and new,
and ourselves
together
looking on
as if living in a gifted,
unlooked for
second life,
seeing again
how
an empty cup
can brim once more
to the gleam,

like some miracle at Cana
and we the guests
having witnessed
everything taken away,
expectant only of winter,
ready to turn away,
saw
spring laid bare
right
beneath it;
then stood together
hands on each other’s shoulders
the chrism of the sight
in our eyes,
all expectation felled
and grown,
ready in a moment
to believe again.



-from Pilgrim