Meadow

A mystery of cycles and seasons, water and drought, timelessness
filled with sedge and rush, oxeye and daisy, aster and indigo.  Who
is to say the grasses aren’t waving, laughing with the rising wind
which rides in moisture for thirsty roots under a grey sky – thunder
in the distance. Grasses shelter moles and voles, rabbits and squirrels,
woodcock and snakes along with 1000 unnamed things.  Dead stalks
protect plant sprouts, life reaches upward until it doesn’t, pods break
open, seeds sail off on their own parachutes to become wishes or
perhaps fairies when the season turns the watching forest to flame.

Just out of sight and behind a small hill populated with tires and a
rusting once red truck under which 12 feral felines dwell, a five year old
oak pushing through the tarnished grill making space for the clematis
vine to twine and flower, flows the headwaters for a river, here
a steam trickling over mossy rocks, where crawdads and minnows still swim.
A would-be road, all crumbling asphalt and dashed hopes stops at the edge
where a wooden bridge once carried wagons of hay, trailers of cotton
safely to the other side, right up to the fallen-in barn and the house
whose broken panes and tattered curtains speak silently of shattered dreams.

The azaleas cover the walk in blankets of pink and purple petals, vying for
sun while honeysuckle vines climb up their stems, lay themselves out
on the branches, summon things that whine and sing, seeking sweet nectar,
food fit for queens.  Under the porch the old raccoon dreams of the days
when food could be easily found in tin bins set out nightly just for him. In
the kitchen garden, wild sage and lavender rule over tiny strawberries
struggling to carry on challenged  by unruly lemon balm, rosemary and
spearmint. At sunrise, the mockingbird sings the lark’s meadow song to the sun
starting her trek across the magenta sky as the moon yawns and drifts away.

…

This is a poem for an assignment, one of the choices asking:  ” Is it possible to write a sudden fiction or poem in which setting is exclusively important, and where character doesn’t exist? ”

That was my prompt for the day.