Field Near Linden, Alabama

Mary Oliver, 1991

For hours
they float in the distance—
finally they drift down
like black shingles
from some old temple of the sun,
so I know, somewhere in the world
the terrible cleansing
has begun. Once, across a field,
a dozen of them sat in a tree.
I stopped the car and walked toward them
until they were above me,
huge and shifty,
in their leather wings,
and what was below them, in the grass,
was clearly dead.
The story about Jesus in the cave
is a good one,
but when is it ever like that,
as sharp as lightning
or even the way the green sea does everything—
quickly, and with such grace? Clumsy and slow, the birds clattered down, and huddled—
their beaks were soft as spoons,
but they bent to their labor
with a will, until
their bellies swelled,
they could hardly climb back into the air
and go flapping away.
A year later
I cross the field again, and in that hot place
the grass rises thick and clean, it
shines like the sea.

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