Wheat field. Courtesy of Javier/flickr.
Loneliness thick as the fields of wheat. Wheat I walk through
daily, scent of heat and silt. It shimmers in the breeze,
the sun unfurling over the hills. I stand at the edge,
cupping my mouth around someone’s name. A cloud of gnats
makes chaos of the August air. We need a word for this:
feeling far from home when you’re right there.
And what is to miss but a catch in the throat, the scent
of spoiled fruit, the highway beckoning like larksong. The fall
from the oak that fractured my arm. Once, out walking,
I found the grass scattered with lamb bones, picked clean
and bleached white, the ribcage curved like a ship’s hull.
I want to learn to be open like the lake, to wet the freckle
on someone’s jaw. I want to be wilderness, the sound of my shoes
trampling weeds and sprigs of straw. Scent of earth and wheat.
Crows lounge on telephone wires. I lick the sweat
from my upper lip. I’ll call it salt. Something snaps underfoot.
A field mouse’s skull. I’ll call it rock, not bone.