Back from the Fields

Until nightfall my son ran in the fields, looking for God knows what. Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing. Something to fill an empty spot. Maybe a luminous angel or a country girl with a secret dark. He came back empty-handed, or so I thought. Now I find them: thistles, goatheads, the barbed weeds all those with hooks or horns the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones those wearing lantern jaws, old ones in beards, leapers in silk leggings, the multiple pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those with juices and saps like the fingers of thieves nation after nation of grasses that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds and grab handholds in whatever lean place. It’s been a good day.