Testing the Soil

(for David Hancock)

I just want to tell you
I did love you very much that day.
Lying in the pasture,
two cows across the ravine.
We put our faces to the ground,
buried our chins in the dirt,
not really to plant them
but more, to test the soil, it seemed.
Our eyes met
across waving grass blades--
two fireflies rising.

You spoke to me of Christmas
though spring had just begun.
You wished me glad, most glad, tidings
for the seasons of my life.

Part of us still lives in that field
behind your mother's house. Our chins
long planted elsewhere now.
The light of the fireflies
has never burned out.

Elaine Blanchard
(1973)