Shepherds’ Field in Spring

By Emma Lou Thayne

In March the flowers here grow wild. They look

and smell like good cantatas sound—multi-textured,

intricately colored. They take the rocks,

filling with the breeze that sifts down from the next

hill where the Minaret call becomes a chime.

Beside the burial of ages, just

out of sight of Bethlehem, there is no time—

no such conception, no dust to dust:

Only flower to flower. It must have been the same

for simple viewers of the stars. The fear

of not quite knowing disappears on this plain

where Ruth reaped and the heavens came so near

that even now, unqualified by how

the knees have bent—or not—before, the lonely

places fill with this insistent flowering.

The Sun loosens the frost: I know what can’t be shown.

Gustave Dore