Jonathan Johnson-Swagel

By June the field no longer negotiates.

Old stems stand pale
inside the grass that has surpassed them.
Saplings lift their round leaves
into heat and wind,
green turning over green
in the small weather
of their own branches.

In the highest fork
that will bear his weight,
the blackbird holds.

Not high.

High enough.

He is almost nothing
until he moves:

dark given beak and foot,
a match-head of shadow
struck upright in leaves.

Then the shoulder opens.

Red
as warning is red.
Red as ember
under ash.
Red as the body
when display
is survival.

His call tears out,
metallic, wet,

water struck hard
in a galvanized pail.

No sweetness.

Below him the hen passes
through cover,
brown, streaked,
grass-colored,
already almost grass,
carrying the nest
in the caution of her body.

From the ditch
another male answers.
Then the fence line.
Then the willow
no one noticed
until it gave back sound.

So the meadow has borders.

Not fence.
Not deed.
Not any surveyor’s chain
pulled tight through heat.

Thistle.
Milkweed.
Seedhead.
Ditch water.
A tremble of leaves.

A throat smaller than a plum
casts its law
over what it can defend.

Before the mower.
Before the hawk-shadow
slides over the grass.
Before the snake
threads the lower stems.
Before the cowbird waits
on the wire.

Still he sings.

The branch bends
and steadies.

The red shows,
closes,
shows again.

Wind turns the leaves
to their pale backs.
Wind drops.
They darken.

He calls once more.

The grass receives the sound
and does not translate it.