Overheard in the Lower Pasture

The talk I want to hear –
            the chatter, the hum, the buzz –
is talk for which I need instruments
and a translator. Oh, and time.

                                                        Time
is indispensable if you wish to catch
a snippet of conversation between
fescue roots and the passing nightcrawler,
tunneling her way beneath the greening pasture,
            pulsing with the pressures of April.

Do they have what they need? If I lay
                                                        very still
on this dew-drenched patch of ground,
and merely cup my ear to earth, will I
make out anything, anything at all? And
even if so, how will I know what to do?

How will I know what is expected of me?
How will I know how to help?

*

Shhh. Too many words, too much noise.
                                                        Stop.
                                                        Just stop.
If you wish to overhear, dial back
the overthinking and the overdoing.
            Swim in the soil's sound and sway. That's it.
                                                        That's it.