Where Day Unfolds Poem by Seamus O' Brian

As a boy I often walked
Meadows brushed with summer’s gold
Beneath the slanting sun I sought
The twilight fields where day unfolds.

Where autumn chested robin sways
On cattail clumps ascending spire;
Who unimpressed by human ways
Yet summons sunset’s muted fire.

And scurrying, fervent footed mice
Beneath the brambled berry patch
With diligent scritch and urgent scratch
Pause, suddenly silent, as I pass by.

The night swift climbs the late day breeze
Staccato thrusts of wing and bone
Ascending arcs, Dadaelian’s ease
Icarus falls with haunting moan.

Yet finds again his skyward arc
On wrenching wing, intrepid heart.
And I outstretched upon the grass
Alone observe his aerial act.

And watch the final fiery spears
Of sunset gild the meadow blades.
The burnished pink to grayness fades
As Aphrodite’s star appears.

The tall pines lift their swaying boughs
To catch the final auburn shafts,
While twilight gathers herself below
The mouldering logs and tufts of grass.

And creeps along the rabbit trails
And through the brambled berry patch
To meet me on the dwindling path,
Paused, on the fading edge of day.

Hushed now, the robin and the lark,
As Venus lifts her wondrous light,
And I in the weight of the falling dark
Hear the night swift’s fading cry.

I oft recall those twilight walks
And wish that I could find again
The meadows brushed with summer’s gold
In the twilight fields where day unfolds.