Raking Hay on a Rough Slope – Wendell Berry

Raking hay on a rough slope,
when I was about sixteen,
I drove to the ridgetop and saw in a neighbor’s field
on the other side a pond in a swale,
and around it the whole field filled with chicory in bloom,
blue as the sky reflected in the pond— bluer even,
and somehow lighter, though they belonged to gravity.

They were the morning’s blossoms and would not last.
But I go back now in my mind to when
I drew the long windrow to the top of the rise,
and I see the blue-flowered field,
holding in its center the sky-reflecting pond.
It seems, as then, another world in this world,
such as a pilgrim might travel days
and years to find, and find at last
on the morning of his return by his mere
being at home awake—a moment seen, forever known.