A Colander of Barley

The smell, once water has rinsed it, is like a field of ripe grain, or the grain held in a truck, and if you climb the steel side, one foot lodged on the hubcap, the other on the wheel, and pull your body upward, your hands holding to tarp hooks, and lift toes onto the rim of the truck box, rest your ribs against the side, you will see beetles and grasshoppers among the hulled kernels. Water stirs and resurrects harvest dust: sun beating on abundance, the moist heat of grain collected in steel, hands plunging and lifting, the grain spilling back.