Leila Wilson

The field is filled with what we see without sleep. Never completely closed, it quickly erodes when tilled before rain. If clogged with boulders it won’t be razed and once burdened cannot quicken under flocks. The field reveals glint and holds leaning, pulls twist from taut knots of buds. We watch the field for stirring, wait for stems to spring back from sparrows. We hope for a swell in its middle so we can say we saw the sway that comes from noticing. Water meanders to prairie potholes, throws cordgrass into switchbacks as we push past bramble and scare a whistling wheel of geese into air. The field draws hawks and sides of trains, cradles pools from storms where ducks plumb for water snails. We trample light between us, no way to lope in parting the swales. We must flatten to fill the space with all the rolling wrapped up in us. Before home, the gabled barn across the road throws the brightest rise we’ve ever seen the field try on. The field is not in rows, is not a faded saw-songed croon. It pushes green a mist above mud, shows how we make do. We wonder what we’re not in the field. What scours, cuts, or knocks. If we could stay and still feel full the low line rounding out a spread of subtle slope.

The equilibrium of any particular aspect of nature rests on the equivalence of its opposites. —Piet Mondrian Some land lives so water can comb it into grids. This is why lowlands tilt still toward the sea. This so we call our canal leaning horse, hat tempting wind, somewhere a tear in linen where the loom bent a heddle. We plant lapis in the middle of begonia boxes hung from our houseboat’s sills. At night the eels snug against our houseboat’s hum, water’s warm hem. We hear them slip itch into our floor. Our houseboat lilts when the bigger boats slide us waves. Our concrete floats. We’re mostly moored to stay. In the damp bank where the ducks hedge weeds, our bikes sleep. We lean toward wind. Our pant legs thin from all the rain on our knees. From here the horizon gauzes above us. We are half hidden by light. We are folds in fog. We stand open on the deck and beckon the silt to settle. We wait for a balance so grand that any flicker of inverse could pull us up to spires.