High summer throbs and buzzes like a light
bulb burning out, the fields all full of wings.
I walk through hum and chaffing, keep my sight
set on a surging through the heart of things.
Grass shoots through concrete walkway somehow, green
breaking up gray. In hardness, where to root?
This everyday I walk a path between
earth, sky, and deeper earth. More than a suit
for ghost, my body also hopes to rise.
A white horse runs through pasture in my dream,
its mane a rippling mirror of the sky’s
own clouds. Like clay, I’m mostly what I seem,
a little not. I’d stroll this grassy hill
forever, if I could, and often think I will.

Clarence Gagnon, Trees in the Sun, 1903. Image from WikiArt (public domain).