Winter Fields [Haiku]

tawny grain stalks,
unkempt, like mussed hair;
a bird flies out.

DAILY PHOTO: Northern Laos Farmland

DAILY PHOTO: Evergreen & Pasture in Autumn

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Burnable World [Haiku]

after the harvest,
farmland - dry & ignitable:
distant smoke.

DAILY PHOTO: South Karnataka Farmland

“Feeling for the Farmers” by Li Shen [w/ Audio]

Hoeing farmer, as heat haze roils,
His flowing sweat waters the soil.
All those who know food on a plate
Should feel each grain comes of that toil.

NOTE: The title of this poem (悯农, or Mǐn Nóng) is often translated as “Toiling Farmers,” though “Compassion for Farmers” or “Pity Farmers” would be closer to the literal translation.

“Mowing” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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.

“The Hayloft” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

Through all the pleasant meadow-side
The grass grew shoulder-high,
Till the shining scythes went far and wide
And cut it down to dry.

These green and sweetly smelling crops
They led in wagons home;
And they piled them here in mountain tops
For mountaineers to roam.

Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail,
Mount Eagle and Mount High --
The mice that in these mountains dwell,
No happier are than I!

O what a joy to clamber there,
O what a place for play,
With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
The happy hills of hay!

DAILY PHOTO: Kyrgyz Farmland

DAILY PHOTO: North Thailand Farmland