What Is the Field?

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.