Confession
I fell in love with a field of rye.
It happened this spring for the first time and I am not young.
Let me tell you how this field was both a single being and a multitude.
How it lay open to sky, wind, creature, sound.
How it rippled and flowed, bent, bowed, lay down, arose,
stood tall, grew taller, held its ground.
It hummed and whispered.
Sometimes it went completely still.
I watched it build itself out of chemistry
in a few short weeks, each stalk forming leaflet, segment,
grain head, braid, fine hairs. As it grew, wild daisies
bloomed inside the long straight rows, each a separate question
to do with love. The sun drove patterns through the furrows,
weaving self and shadow into its warp and woof
and every single color would show up, threading stems
with teal, bronze, blue-black, azure, purple, silver-white.
It held the whole world for a while.
And when the rye was cut down
and lay flat on the earth to dry where it fell,
the all of it radiated a gold and silver light.
Even then, it glowed.
HAYDEN SAUNIER is the author of A Cartography of Home and four other books of poetry. Read more.
First published in Lascaux Review.