you cannot get closer
to soil than this
unless you are mining
or buried
at work in a field
like this one
ignoring bees
intent on
searching out sweet
drawn by perfumed soap
and blue t-shirts
buzz disappointment
when they land on cotton
not petals, and keep seeking
tasting our sweat
instead of nectar
if you look up
from pulling
thistles from celeriac
carefully
just once
watch land planted in rows
ripple under sun,
swell and fall in a tide to the woods
and, further back
foothills rolling like larger waves
breaking day against sky
in ringing deeper blueness
you will say like water
earth moves in waves
only too slowly
for our senses to catch
me, I want
to swim in it
Susan Daniels Poetry 
Like this one lots, so descriptive and clever…
Thanks, Nelle. All I could think of every time I looked up during my time at the farm today 🙂
Oh Susan, so beautiful and so visually delightful..’breaking day against sky/in ringing deeper blueness..you will say like water/earth moves in waves..I can hear the bees and feel the earth..you transported me.
Mimi, I am so very glad you liked this 🙂
Thank you!
The image of Earth as being fluid is so well done. I love it.
Joe–thanks so much. Wish I had had my camera with me.
your words provided all the visual needed.
🙂 thanks, Joe.
Nicely written
Thanks, Dewey.
I especially like the way this poem begins because of the way your introduce and meditate or the idea of “closeness.”
Thanks, Jeremy. We were sitting on sandy loam soil, weeding, and all of a sudden I felt this intimacy with the soil, a simplicity of being one with a task and the earth.
I know (and love) the feeling you are describing.
I remember planting some berry vines that I had rescued in my parents’ yard years ago after doing some “heavy” gardening and suddenly feeling overcome with emotion. It was not the first time this had happened and it won’t be the last either.
🙂 Love when that happens.
And I love the last two stanzas, that blending of motion on land and water that is so apparent when we are outside, in a field, on a very hot day.
I think Western New York, near Lake Erie, can play tricks on the mind when you see the rows of green in the fields that turn blue in the hot sun and hum with insects and then you see the humming blue (that isn’t always blue) of Erie.
You are so seeing what I was seeing, but shift the scene to closer to Zoar Valley; Little Valley to be more specific, in the very early foothills of what I believe are the Adirondacks; imagining those further foothills bluing in the distance like a lake, and there you have it 😉
I have been through the Adirondacks in summer and winter (though sadly I have not hiked them yet) so I have a sense of what you’re describing. I also grew up near the Blue Ridge Mountains which got their name because they have this blue hazy quality that makes them look, especially from up high, like rolling waves breaking over the Piedmont in central Maryland and Virginia.
Yes! I have seen that, and the Blue Ridges are gorgeous–what I saw today would be a faint echo of that, but a similar feel–heat illusion plus mountains in the distance equaling land as water 🙂
Susan, your words have such an impact on my skin. I thank you, please never cease this greatness of yours!!
Mari–I feel the same way about your writing. Let’s make a deal–I won’t stop if you won’t 🙂
awe, thank you love – Deal ; )
You’re on 😀
This is so beautifully and cleverly done! Blues, buzzings and berry picking……the rolling land, the rows stretched out like rows of braided hair!
Noel, your comment is so beautiful–I love that image!
Wow, stunning words expressed so eloquently.
Thank you–I just tried to capture that simple but majestic vision in front of my eyes. Glad you liked.