Village square and greensward

to a weekend: to the edges

women work in shin-length pants,

mulch and hedge along the brickwalk,

hydrangea globe and fountain gladiolus,

angles tight as hair, as protestant,

the planted peace of serial planners—

long and drawn, polite the fight

with beauty, time away, and open space.

Village green and common

to the tents of morning

market, bean crop and loaf round

the local grounds, slow to roast,

curio of jams—the lay read

and ask what is the red, the price,

the provenance—the civil whites

the gladiolus stewarding—they

who prepare, purchase.

Village common and rotary

hymn, westminster quarter

breach of air, the daub of partial

tones, the bourdon hangs invisible:

gazebo—the retired man of letters

pitches over yankee doodle bunting

founding words and founders, overcome—

the muny brass, the gladiolus rag

blows over open space, what is not here.

Ryan Harper is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies.  He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018).  Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Kithe, Consequence, Fatal Flaw, Tahoma Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. A resident of New York City and Waterville, Maine, Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.