what was it it whispered?

The backyard is almost completely filled in now and the yard needs mowing each week. I'm not sure the new views on our walks will yield a lot more. There are still a few spots that are lagging that I'm keeping my eye on, though.


Now I begin to see the empty spaces and wonder if they will get filled in and what might be most beautiful there.


And every now and then the late bloomers will pop out between the full growth to delight me (yes, just for me, at that moment, in that light and space and time -- why should it not be for me?)


The wind caught the chimes just as I was walking by here and the shovel, waiting for more work, and the trellis, waiting for climbing vines, seemed to listen intently in the morning air.

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;

Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—

And that was why it whispered and did not speak.

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,

Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,

Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers

(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

~Mowing, Robert Frost