Chard deNiord: Meadow Altar

For Ed Temple

The meadow below his house in Putney, Vermont
lay hidden by a stand of maple and oak
as an empyreal anteroom with a stone
at its center too large and deep in the ground to move
with his team of Percherons, so he decided
to think of it as an altar while haying and praying
as he skirted it with his sickle mower and then
approach it when he had finished, as if he
were Moses and it was Mt. Horeb, and then climb
to its summit, as he liked to call it, and fall
to his knees like a fallen tree with broken branches
and speak to God as dusk descended like a hand
he couldn’t see commanding him to rise
after several minutes and head back home, although
he always had more to pray, Puritan that he was,
though mindful, too, of his horses’ thirst and hunger,
as well as with his own hot dinner awaiting him
at the table he made from birch for his beloved,
Mehitabel, the year they married. So, he spoke
to his horses, now loosed from the wagon and grazing
nearby with heads bowed to the fescue and rye,
as if also praying, which, of course, they had no need
to do, blessed and saved as they were already
as the Percheron saints of Putney, Vermont.

~~~~~

Copyright 2026 Chard deNiord

Chard deNiord’s many collections of poetry include Westminster West (Tupelo, 2025).  In fact, Chard lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, Liz.