Sounds around a Man

It’s late, late in the year
to hear a plowman sing, he yells
his tune above the tractor’s clatter
mocked by a crow from its perch
in the grove. I listen to air shaped
to sound, a hunter shoots, a pheasant
squawks from the meadow and flashes
bronze and scarlet as he sails downwind,
a dog barks, somewhere a cow bawls,
two boys shout from a farmyard.
I grew up with this language hoping
to find what signs warn me what I
stand for, for whom I speak.
These bugle notes ring out in a
bowl of sky bound by horizon’s
ring to solid earth, the plowman
rides over the hill with his song,
wind mutters among the dead weeds,
the power line overhead vibrates
its monotone, I am caught in a web
of voices anchored as far
as their echo.