Open Country

It is much like ocean the way it opens

and rolls. Cows dot the slow climb of a field

like salmon trawls dot swells, and here or there

ducks climb on no definite heading.

Like water it is open to suggestion,

electric heron, and every moon

tricky currents of grass.

Let me guess;

when you repair the damaged brain

of a beaten child or bring to a patient

news that will never improve, you need

a window not a wall to turn to.

And you come back here

where land has ways of going on

and the shadow of a cloud

crawls like a freighter, no port in mind,

no captain, and the charts dead wrong.

for George