Corn and Soy

Corn and soy and rye mark the seasons. Sprouts to harvest to fallow fields it is easy to drive past without taking notice the familiar landscape and feelings and places and people and things move in us toward an entropy of consciousness yes we stop looking and feeling and noticing. I prefer not to stop noticing. As the corn dries in the September fields… The English ivy and kudzu high on utility poles. They’re mowing the roadsides… tucking them in early. I doubt the mowers will return before the cold scrapes its sharp nails over the hardened land. The cold that frees the body that frees the mind. Spring brought excitement for new life but toward summer’s end Mama’s embrace turns to clench clutch vise and death-grip it chokes and chokes and chokes until it begins to die and I am beginning to see her bones on weeping cherry trees on apple mint on tomato vines. 

How many times have I written on corn and soy and tomatoes and… yet within me they remain new. What do I know of nature? Almost nothing. I don’t need some other place. The corn stalk never produces the same ear twice. That is enough for me. And you? I don’t go further than the cornfield. Lurking beyond is just another man’s war. I return to the old bumpy road splitting thousands of acres of farmland… I duck my head into the rows of corn. I discover something new. I discover something that should not have been forgotten.