The Idea of a Meadow

Elisa Gabbert


I’ve become obsessed with the idea of a meadow, a meadow I am not in.

Yellow flowers are in the meadow. They must be; they are part of my idea of a meadow.

There is the yellow on green below, the flowers in the grass, the white on blue above.

My viewpoint is in the middle, though I’m not in the meadow.

It forms a white line extending out to the horizon, a line that is real in the real of the meadow—

When the meadow is real, so is the line.

You can think of the meadow as kind.

But the meadow is indifferent to human life—even to mine, even my meadow.

My meadow with day moon and trickling stream, rabbit and magpie.

White wisp of cloud, white snow on the mountain, the meadow a valley—

There is cloud wisp and flowers, but they are not for me, when the meadow is real.

I’m not in the meadow. The meadow is not mine.