Country Life
You wouldn’t think much happens here,
But I’m reminded as I write
That drama of the magnitude
Of Shakespeare’s tragedies unite,
Not open to the public.
Frogs are flattened,
Deer are drowned,
Dogs go lost,
Trees are downed –
Magnificent, gigantic things,
Significant beyond their rings.
Fledglings never get to fly,
Snakes are dropped from out the sky.
Desperate bees glassed-in in pain,
Looking, never finding ‘out’ –
You’d never guess
That in the neat and cared-for grass
The cat that sleeps here as I write
Becomes the reaper of the night –
A Jack the Ripper, skilled and heartless
Stalking, lurking, lurching –
Never dream that cosmic struggles
Make their place right here
Where battlegrounds and contests jeer
At life’s apparent concord.
Country life –
The quiet life
Where nothing seems to happen;
Let me tell you…
Country Life 9.7.2004
Circling Round Nature; Birth, Death & In Between; Cat Book;
Arlene Corwin
