The Higher Earth Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The meadow cannot recall the men who have
Walked in between her belled stalks,
But she knows that they have seen her in
Those seasons when she is most depressed;
When the leaves of her hem shake from timorous breath,
When her petals reawaken in the morning’s lilac,
And the cricks flow like tassels over the smoothed
Stone upon her throat,
And the boot prints they leave upon her as they
Moved into work the deeper wilderness
She never proceeds towards, but bathes there as her
Shoulders yawn the higher cliffs where
Elk graze inoffensively, and foxes nuzzle the dimpled tows,
Her smile a kind of lazy nod, the flowers her blush,
The bees sip the pollen of her perfumes;
She pauses for the day upon the yellow slope,
As the men yell indistinguishable epitaphs
High up in the pine trees quaking like a ship
Far down below from where she gazes steadily
The daylight bright upon the higher earth.