The Hunt by Billy Collins for National Poetry Month

The Hunt by Billy Collins

Somewhere in the rolling hills and farm country
that lie beyond speech
Noah Webster and his assistants are moving
across the landscape tracking down a new word.

It is a small noun about the size of a mouse,
one that will be seldom used by anyone,
like a synonym for isthmus,
but they are pursuing the creature zealously

as if it were the verb to be,
swinging their sticks and calling out to one another
as they wade through a field of waist-high barley.