Fields

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I often walk across the road and along the sorghum field (it's cotton in alternating years) to look for birds and butterflies that hide in the grass and wildflowers growing along our "Farm to Market" road.  Painted Buntings stop there in their migration, and  Lark Sparrows and  Red-winged Blackbirds call to mates from the occasional  tall sunflowers that invade the carefully planted sorghum.

This week the ripening field of grain has begun its seasonal change of color from green to gold to rust that fascinates me every year and transports me in memory to Oklahoma fields where my uncle raised wheat.  One memory that stands out is of my siblings, cousins, and I riding the truck that carried the harvested wheat to the elevator in town.  I don't often do this (share my poetry except with writing groups), but I decided instead of describing the fields again I'd just share the words I wrote a few years ago.

Fields, at 60

The sorghum fields across the road are changing

again, ripening as days count down to summer.

It’s that one day in early June when the fields

are mixed in equal parts of green and gold

and rust,  when the colors of grain for a single moment

are in perfect balance, blending in stippled swirls

that shift and eddy with the wind.  My eyes strain

to catch the colors, to fix them as they surge and billow

in that ocean of grain.  I see the field, and feel it too:

ingrained in me, gold deepening to amber,

rust for harvest, and again, dry brown stalks.

I feel it still, as I did then, sun-warmed grains

that cradled us as we rode the wheat truck

from another field that other summer afternoon:

Golden rays stretch out from the western sky ahead,

slanting across laughing cousins balanced

atop the cut grain piled onto the truck. Ripe

kernels slide over our bare feet and drop

from our fingers as we raise our palms to the sun.

At the end of the gravel road the elevator looms

still, white, blocking the sun. In the truck's bed,

we lean back, arms and legs spread wide,

as though to make snow angels—

but the grains fill in too quickly and our impressions

collapse as the truck lumbers into the elevator.

“Hold on!” grownups in the cab cry

as we grasp the front of the bed.

Trying to balance, we hold on

as the truck box rises and the grain,

like so many grains of sand that mark the hours,

slips away under our feet. When the truck levels,

we let go our grasp, fingers cramped with the holding,

and collapse exhausted to the emptied bed as the truck

bumps out of the elevator, and the golden grains

disappear beneath the grate.