Hay Meadows

She snatches

                      hay meadows

untethered

           from barn

                    or field

                          by summer's warmth.

She works quickly

sewing quaking grass

sweet vernal and red fescue.

Wild ribbons

of curlews, swifts and swallows

are loosely tacked and overstitched.

Her cloth patterned

with ox-eye daisy and betony

                                   is light as dimity.

Sheep are pinned in place.

Barns embellish like scattered flock.

She takes stone walls

and stitches seam over seam

hemming meadows to earth.

But the hay meadows

                        fray and disappear

                                    into empty skies.