Youth of Grass

.

Yesterday in the hushed white sunlight 

down along the meadows by the river

through all the bright hours they cut the first hay

of this year to leave it tossed in long rows

leading into the twilight and long evening

while thunderheads grumbled from the horizon

and now the whole valley and the slopes around it 

that look down to the sky in the river

are fragrant with hay as this night comes in

and the owl cries across the new spaces

to the mice suddenly missing their sky

and so the youth of this spring all at once is over 

it has come upon us again taking us

once more by surprise just as we began

to believe that those fields would always be green

.

~ W.S. Merwin

.

.