Field After Mowing

For wheat-wind murmurations, evening prayer, 
clover-addled cricket-song, furrows 
new-winnowed, meniscus-blue-moon, 
and somewhere the sound of water, seeping;

For killdeer eyes black-wet beads, 
bugs, tractor-turned shrew-burrow, 
chaffed necks and raw elbows chill, 
and all aloof, one stubble-skimming bat;

For the cloistered life abounding, the habit, 
of hearing. Stalk-snap, step, tread, 
for the wide sound of settling sky. 
For all unpaid owings—wonder, love.

                             For Gerard Manley Hopkins