"In Spring (2)" by Joe Bolton

You do what you can
to be modern in a country
of fields stitched together
with barbed wire the hunters cut through
before it has a chance

to rust, fields
mapped off by gravel roads
that refuse to swerve,
that make paths for the sun to follow each day.
You do what you can.

But you are late
or early for stylishness,
and all the cities and affluence you will know
are delicate tendrils the white motion
of your slender hands
can raise from the thawed earth.

(By Joe Bolton from"Uncollected Poems" in The Last Nostalgia)