Equinox

Inside the earth is turned over into a new language / Inside us the seeds . . .
—Charles Wright

i

We dug potatoes from their cabinets of soil, watched
the belly of the earth turn over in its grave, a glimpse of flesh
through darkening ground, roots and greenlings—then the plow.
Night comes early. Crop lines pin the squirming sky.

ii

Wingbeat and whir, you know certain afternoons the air seethes,
mounts the pasture and sinks its teeth. The horizon comes for you.
Seeds split in the beak, seasons slouch and thrust and sing the harvest through.

Blasted trees keep time, stumped in the mizzle, dreaming of axes.
The weather goes just to show it can. Above, seagulls flee to farmland.

iii

Each day, the hunt starts later. In the cold, the scent of living things
stays close to the ground. The hounds bay at nothing, and it keens—
that impossible word, that hand on the bell of the hour.