The Surveyor
       

Who says the eye loves level,
loves plumb, loves the stiff weeks
in spring when the tractors
cirrus the grey hills,
dragging under the grey sun,
loves the dashes terraced into slopes,
the stooped women back of houses
staking their rows, and their cellars
where lidless jars align the shelves,
loves the split rail and the culvert,
loves the section line running out to the county seat,
loves the thin border of macadam and weeds
that a collie runs a full mile
defining his property from me—I who love
to wander the river trails,
to meander and bend,
to slow in the mud of red clay,
to cut off the sky deep in the hackberry and the low mesquite,
to lose my way.

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Copyright © 2016 Gary Hawkins All rights reserved
from worker
Main Street Rag
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission