Field After Mowing

For wheat-wind murmurations, evening prayer,
clover-addled cricket-song, furrows
new-winnowed, meniscus-blue-moon,
and somewhere the sound of water, seeping;

For killdeer eyes black-wet beads,
bugs, tractor-turned shrew-burrow,
chaffed necks and raw elbows chill,
and all aloof, one stubble-skimming bat;

For the cloistered life abounding, the habit,

of hearing. Stalk-snap, step, tread,
for the wide sound of settling sky.
For all unpaid owings—wonder, love.

                             For Gerard Manley Hopkins