Evening Fields

The Ohio countryside is so beautiful that I wrote several poems trying, as one does, to capture God’s work in a human hand. Evening Fields is one of them.

Evening Fields

by Annmarie Throckmorton, May 18, 1999

In the moist gray evening, bird calls keen

Over fields centered, flat and fertile.

Edging fragile wild blooms mottle velvet green

Where insects saw whee-eee and chortle.

Children splashing in a distant pond

Distant dogs and distant tractors.

Neighbor farm lights on one by one.

Lightning bugs soon to follow.

Dog smells like the sweet grass from her run.

Cat’s bright eyes anticipate the long hot night begun.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

In 1999, I submitted this poem for publication to the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, and the receiving editor played a cruel trick on me in return. He immediately called and breathlessly asked to speak to the poet, A. Throckmorton. His tone of voice suggested that this were the most wonderful poem that he had ever read. When I said that I was A. Throckmorton, he gasped as if in dismay, paused as if he did not know what to do, and then hung up on me with an audible clunk, as any poorly evolved human being would do.