"Meadowlarks and Hawks" by Joseph Stroud

A farm road

in the San Joaquin

heading into the red dirt

of the gold country

miles and miles

of fencerows

with meadowlarks

singing on the wires

the song of one

entering the song

of another

all down the road

window open

I hear song

trailing

into song

the road continuing

as far as I can see

and every mile or so

on top

of a telephone pole

sits

a red-tailed hawk

shoulders hunched

turning his slow

iron gaze

over all he claims

of the singing world

"Meadowlarks and Hawks" by Joseph Stroud from Of This World. © Copper Canyon Press, 2009.

"Directions" by Joseph Stroud

             "In the Valley of the Nidd, Yorkshire" by Edmund John Niemann, Photo by Museums Sheffield

                                              How weary, stale, flat, and unproiftable
                                                        Seem to me all the uses of this world 
                                                           — Hamlet

Take a plane to London.
From King's Cross take the direct train to York.
Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,
then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,
a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,
and soon you'll be on the moors. There's a pub,
The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room,
you can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculier.
For a moment everything will be all right. You're back
at a beginning. Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire country,
into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country.
You'll walk for hours. You'll walk the freshness
back into your life. This is true. You can do this.
Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,
you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,
the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,
you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,
cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking,
making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.

"Directions" by Joseph Stroud, from Of this World. © Copper Canyon Press, 2009.