Woodlands Farm

Just now it's a planter's hat
green of course
with specks of flint
to wear while
digging dock and other
tap roots that pierce
our hopeful furrows in the
soil's fragile skin,
those sharp-snouted
invaders nosing down
yo renew their strength
in a lurking
underworld.

Now, pouf!
It's a stockman's hat
as furry and shaggy as
a Highland beast
to keep him warm when
bedding down with
winter cows or while
her eyes are grazing
among new calves,
a hat to keep off
the chill when the heart must
hold both lamb and chop,
while choosing for the kill.

Now a little tight around the skull,
tangled like an old sack, it
presses on the ears,
worn behind a desk to hold
the body still while
huge thoughts are forced through
the tiny outlet of
a pen.
This sullen bully cap weighs down
the grower of ticked boxes
who must plough straight every time
allow no happy accident of weed
crop carefully to fill
a precise and
legally defined need.

Now it's a hat for the shearing dance,
barely there at all, cupped tight
on his head while
he bends and sways
through the endless
roll and twist of ewes
holding stick-like legs
Between his thighs,
turning, cleaning, releasing
each new forty-second partner
in the graceful fight.

Softer now, it gently wraps his head
warming him in winter while
he mends life-s places when
life itself slows down,
a hat for early dark
and watchfulness
for sudden night alarms
for gifts of fire and wine
when the body
sinks into peace through
narrow cracks in time.

But then, sometimes, he takes off
whatever presses on his thoughts
to stand bare-headed and silent
before something small and unforeseen
in nest or hedge,
or a child’s face,
or a dog snapping at minnows in the sun,
two horses pressed neck-to-neck
as if that were all there was to know,
a cow's kohl-rimmed, liquid houri eye,
or a wide-stretched silent
beauty that
accepts him
with such healing indifference
such lack of need
that for a little time, stilled,
a mere piece of bracken,
just another stone, he forgets
the weight to be replaced.