Over and over, the grasses part
for winds that will never give up
swelling, cresting, receding back
on themselves, wrapping around us.

We are glittering like the metallic green
of a tiger beetle, unhinged for flight,
alive in a field where so much
awaits, the mossy sorrows,

the grasshopping surprises. We fall
in love again with all that is
ours, this particular firefly,
that determined stalk of yarrow.

Leaving the woods is a sadness,
returning home a vague diminishment:
that we are father and son
and not some wild things in the night.

Richard Waring

- published in Sanctuary, magazine of the MA Audobon Society.

Richard Waring's poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Sanctuary, Mothering, The Boston Globe, Phone-A-Poem, and elsewhere. His chapbook, "Listening to Stones," was brought out by Pudding House Publications in 1999. He lives in Belmont, Mass., with his son and daughter.