gray fields
the land around me is flat
though over the corner of the highway there
slinks a gully into a ravine, which quietly grows
into a valley,
an arena for dirt devils to dance.
i quietly skirt the side of the hill, on
my right the fields naked of crops, barns empty
of years and of hay.
that dirt is gray - not brown with dry anticipation
nor yet black with the life that shoots out of death -
gray - not the loud green of the valley or the brash
browns of the hillsides but gray.
Gray with a quiet tired nod, gray as a
concession to overuse and abuse,
gray that knows no other life as it looks
bemused and puzzled at the valley where it
struggles to hold its grain down to earth as sun
pulls the gold - gray, i say, with quiet
shattered dreams of a single good harvest traded
for a dozen half-reapings and now gray with
baffled loss and denial and false cheer and an awful
resignation.
once i met a farmer with eyes brown with a longing
quiet and suppressed, as if he were Noah waiting on a flood.
"don't farm nothin," he said with a dark, quiet smile that did not
need me to understand, but "it's gonna take a while
for this land to come back.... maybe by the time your son
wants to farm." and i wonder about that when i
look up ahead at the corn harvest over land that
once was gray and wonder if rachel's
eyes will ever be green again.
and, by way of disclaiming, rachel does not exist. or rather, she's not named rachel. the story about the farmer is true, and the quotes are unedited.
