The Field Stone
In the backyard,
beside the rectangles
the farmers designed
in the vegetable field,
there is a stone
so large I wonder
how it got there.
There is no mountain near.
There is a hill in the distance,
but it could not have slid down to here.
And no man could have lifted it.
There is a stone in the field
dark in the bright snowy yield of the year
and I do not know how it came to be there.
It has no tapers to drink in
the stiff deposits of other years
and compose itself of strangers.
I think it came unbidden, like a chestnut mare in foal,
to mutely dream in these dark reaches.
In the yard there is a field,
where a large stone stays and serves
as a rest for work-gloves, hand-hoes
and such as the year billows onward.
In rows of tasseled corn
and wild mustard flowers grown,
it is diminished.
In the lengthened days,
when the farmers have gone away,
I go and sit on its warm haunches.
Until the moon rises like a field stone
and reaches the blue cohosh blossoms,
my mind is unconcerned with origins.