Old Order Mennonite Memoirs

Swallows on the telephone wires

Are quarter notes the sun inspires,

A rondo for the wind to play

Through the fields of new-mown hay.

Quarter notes on a sun-lit staff –

My soul is not big enough by half

To hold the songs I hear today

Over the fields of sun-sweet hay.

I try to sing this wild, sweet song;

Then notes dart off and it goes wrong.

Yet still I hear the tunes they play

Above the fields in sunny May.

~Helen C. Smith

I like the idea of my feathered friends being sun-inspired quarter notes on lines above me. And last week when I mowed lawn, the barn swallows swooped all around me, looking...