Was it in stepping into dusk? Did a glance release this turbulence

where Martin's fields thicken with thorn apple and a woodland bird makes a sound?

Not even the quick flowering of summer winds alters it, what a man in a straw hat bending down

above the scythe's reach found,

only now so saturated with rust and greatly indrawn, the way it is in the past.

Yet the blade seems to will itself to hold an edge, expressing the kind of time --

which plays around the roots of the grasses, and still knows, still passes, still causes shadows

to seem to fit themselves around the ankles, refusing separation.

Carol Frost is author, most recently, of "Pure."