A Breath
By Scott Chaskey 

Scott Chaskey is a poet, farmer, and educator who for a quarter century has worked the land for the Peconic Land Trust at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York. He wrote the poem he recites here in 1990, while living on a hillside in Mousehole, Cornwall, UK.

A BREATH

Meadow man, house scholar,
     from field to chair
          I hear the deep choir of the anvil.
Iron and rust; irony, dust.

Then Nordic beat breaks to summer:
     willows wave, elderberry beads
          gift the cloud.
Dog rose shades the shore.

In a measure of rage
     I know the weightlessness of innocence.
          At dawn silken nursery tents
spin the field to song.

Sea air, violet betony stair
     shake the man to make 
          of breath a mortal joy.

Scott Chaskey
c. 1990