Paul Nelson

USA

Hedgerow

Its easy green way between the manors,
or sober march through Iowan corn,
holds a warbling thrush, or two, or cackling
pheasant, bursting above the gay spaniels.

Hard to oversee, these wicker bushes, dense
as convention, longer as tradition, more boundary
than guide, though one can walk along this side
assuming beauty, sheep, boys, atrocities across

as through the dismal glass, no inspiration really
for the kind of lingo that excites, and as for time
it’s time for tea, a beer, time to bring the tractor in,
wash up for supper and bed, mucked boots by the door.

Lately, except for occasional laundry, kites and blown
blossoms, hedgerows get bedecked b y less lyric trash:
MacDonald’s boxes, plastic bags: white from Long’s,
blue from Walmart, translucent from a produce aisle.

Children are taught that hedgerows make good neighbors,
reasonable, confidential and complaisant as refrain, or meter,
calming domestic dispute, rap, slams, sirens roving moors,
wailing burbs, leaping woods, but diminished in the jungled

lace that cultivates the whisper, the chord reduced that fades
insurgent tongues, mutes a noisy International Harvester,
engine of empire plowing held acres of sacred grief,
inspires, with luck, safe assignation.

Cezanne said to “let the white shine through,” and still
fill the canvas, as if to say “breath irregularly,” the instant
somewhat open with affected gaps in typical leaves
by which to glimpse a distant world one must not covet.


 

© All Copyright, Paul Nelson.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.