Sixth Poem: Summer in the Green Mountains

Summer in the Green Mountains

 
On a country road that begins
in the northeast Kingdom of 
Vermont,  
 
there isn't  much, really, but 
pastures and hay fields
divided by barbed wire fences. 

When you cross the Canadian border
into Quebec, fences disappear. 
Cypress trees divide crops from pastures.

You feel as though you are in 
a painting by Van Gough.
  
At the beginning of an end-of-summer day 
we drove across the border.   The hands of our
wrist watches seemed to stop.  

The sun, climbing the sky, cast a golden haze
over acres of already blazing fields of wild mustard
that flooded towards us from the purple mountains.

Forgetting now, that almost every day is fraught
with disappointments, I watched the fields we passed
and then, on a hillock, saw, in a small corral, a young
woman grooming a Palomino's mane while her own  
hair was being tangled by the morning wind.

Minutes later, I saw a farmer
in a faded red tractor
plow under spent corn stalks.

Between the foothills to Owl's Head Mountain, 
I saw the pale, pink shine of a small lake and I thought
of the petit fours we'd surely indulge ourselves with
once we drove up to Owl's Head Village and the small
French Bakery there.

In the ruddy haze of afternoon, driving back to Vermont
but on a different road, we saw again how both fallow and
harvested fields were now overwhelmed by the wild strength
of  bright-as-the-sun, mustard.  The harvested oats, rolled
into gigantic wheels of wire-wrapped fodder to feed
dairy cows during what, in Vermont, is always a deep snow
and long-lasting, winter, seemed, monolithic. 

Yes,
how impressive the oat wheels were,
lined up so neatly
along the road.

Not long after, I saw a long line of Blank Angus cattle,
winding slowly down a path through stubble with
a few bits of green grass poking through.

I looked down that line and saw it was headed
towards a slaughter house.

Calm and in an orderly fashion, the beef cattle descended
as if nothing was particularly disturbing. 

Then, one stopped for a moment and,
with what I knew were velvet-soft lips,
pulled up a few blades of the end of summer
grass.

Pull over, I said, and we did.

He chewed  quite some while before swallowing.   
Then, moving his mud-caked hooves
he continued plodding down the ditch-like path
to the slaughter house below.  

Out of nowhere, flew a golden Cedar Waxwing that
landed on his flank.   After riding in style for awhile, 
with its bright orange beak, it began to peck his fleas. 


Karen Hurley-Heyman
working draft, 7/16/24