09/11/2025
Fields of Light and Rain
The lane is no more than a thought
between two hedges
and my boots making parish-sized sounds,
along the ditch where cans go to rust.
Gate latch cold as a bit in the mouth,
I shoulder through—ash-drip, briar-snag—
into the gleam.
Last night’s rain still beads
on nettle and dock,
each drop a kind of
poor-man’s silver,
enough for anyone
with eyes to spend.
Now fields go on doing what fields do:
taking the light, returning it altered—
green and slick as memory,
each blade of grass a thin bright prayer.
A crow climbs a skitter of clouds above
a tin-roof rain rhythm on the shed—
a drum of heaven practicing scales—
and the dog turns twice into himself,
chasing his tail.
You came laughing, coat unbuttoned,
letting the rain write its wet rosary
down your hair. I read every bead.
Now the years have turned the soil of us,
you could say nothing has changed,
and you’d be almost right,
and I think, as the wind bends the rushes,
that maybe all we ever own
are these small, fleeting moments—
a path glimmering after rain,
the warmth of a word half-spoken,
the long, slow echo of love.
Let the cities keep their cleverness.
I’ll stand knee-deep in the ordinary
until it breaks into light again.
By Kevin McManus, from his forthcoming book, "The Dark Night and the Dawn"
