It begins in a cow lane

with bees and white clover,

courses along corn, rushes

accelerando against rocks.

It rises to a teetering pitch

as I cross a shaky tree-bridge,

syncopates a riff

over the dissonance

of trash—derelict icebox

with a missing door,

mohair loveseat sinking

into thistle. It winds through green

adder’s mouth, faint as the bells

of Holsteins heading home.

Blue shadows lengthen,

but the undertow

of a harmony pulls me on

through raspy Joe-pye-weed

and staccato-barbed fence.

It hums in a culvert

beneath cars, then empties

into a river that flows oboe-deep

past Indian dance ground, waterwheel

and town, past the bleached

stones in the churchyard,

the darkening hill.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by The Christian Century. Shari Wagner’s most recent book of poetry is The Harmonist at Nightfall, Bottom Dog Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of The Christian Century and the poet. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.