Surveying Property in Alabama
Acres of yellow wild flowers carpet a field
Soft and fragrant beneath the hooves of grazing cattle.
A half mile further west, another is clothed in white.
A pond mirrors the blue of the April sky
As a single white cloud admires its own reflection.
Along the roadside tentative buttercups
Offer up the first of their spring churning
While mounds of crimson clover, their blossoms waving
Like so many pom-poms, cheer them on.
Trees, recruited as volunteer sentinels, dutifully line a fence row,
Obeying the order to stand guard
As the freshly-turned red clay-laden soil
Begins its labor, directed by the men and machines
That would master it, but are instead enslaved by its beauty.
4/17/90 CBByrd