Three generations of men populate Todd Davis’s poem about sons and grandfathers, a reflective piece on the circularity of past, present, and future.
—
Long Meadow
Hauling stone from the creek in the tractor wagon,
my son sits on my father’s lap, helps steer the load
across the long meadow. My father tells him
to follow the tracks laid down in the grass
by the trips he’s taken all fall.
Noah, now three, asks if this is the way home.
My father nods but cannot help noticing three
turkey vultures that circle to the west over a section
of woods where in July we took down the limb
of a hackberry that nearly sent me into the ground.
Here with the sky’s blue open like the wings
of a jay, he thinks of weeks early in November,
before the first snows, when he will work
stone into walls, learning the gravity of each,
the comeliness and security that determines
their final resting place.
And I think of that day in June, in some year
we’ve not yet considered, when the face of the sun
lights the heads of clover, darkens the grass
with shadows that hang in the trees, surrounding
this life he has made, when my son, now grown,
will read this poem, so he may find the path
to the place where his grandfather works the earth.
***
Originally published in Ripe (Bottom Dog Press, 2002)
Interested in submitting poetry to The Good Men Project? Check out our guidelines.
Like The Good Men Project on Facebook
Photo by Asmund Isaksen/Flickr