by HARVENA CONEAD RICHTER
TO ONE brought up on a farm
The sea was strange.
It needed fences to narrow
That wide blue range.
He looked on the wave’s wet troughs
With a farmer’s scorn.
Those furrows that knew no plough
And raised no corn.
Rut turning his eyes to the north,
He caught one day
A herd of white manes moving
In the saline spray.
And saw in the swells and dips
The homesick motion
Of wind through the young green oats
Of his farmland ocean,
Rippling and swelling the limber
Sunlit shoots.
As if this great sea tide
Pulled at their roots.
He felt at home now, he said.
Nor could he be
Moved from the blue and salty
Acres of sea.