Boys in a Pasture by Annie Lighthart

Boys in a Pasture by Winslow Homer, 1874.

Boys in a Pasture

Here on the wall
the bit of white in the green
afternoon stops the summer
from falling.  The bit of white
keeps the nail still
interested in heights and invested
in keeping gravity at bay.

Such a small thing, a bit of white
paint surprised on a painted boy’s shin.
But even the sun slows
a revolution to look,
and the grasses
stop in their consideration
of the wind, the heat, the wind,

though the two boys go on feeling the earth
rolling them gently out of the frame.

Annie Lighthart

From Iron String, Airlie Press 2013. Used with permission of the author.

Annie Lighthart started writing poetry after her first visit to an Oregon old-growth forest.  Since those first strange days, she published her poetry collection Iron String with Airlie Press, has had her poetry chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye to be placed in Ireland’s Galway University Hospitals, and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac.  She has taught at Boston College, as a poet in the schools, and currently teaches workshops for Portland’s Mountain Writers.  She can be reached through her website www.annielighthart.com