When the Fields Remember

"The earth keeps what we leave, and gives it back in season."

I walk the stubbled fields

after the sickle’s song has faded.

The air is edged with smoke and iron,

the scent of apples bruising in grass,

grain stacked in golden silence,

waiting.

✦

We gather not only wheat and barley,

but voices—

the stories pressed into furrows,

the footsteps still warm in the soil.

Each sheaf tied with twine

becomes a season remembered:

a father’s laughter breaking dusk,

a mother’s song rising with the dawn.

✦

I hold the last sheaf high,

a corn-dolly fashioned from its stalks,

a spirit bound in braids of straw.

Life must die to feed the living,

harvest is sacrifice,

but memory survives.

✦

When the fields are bare,

and winter closes its fist,

I will have these baskets of memory—

grain of story,

fruit of love,

song of silence—

enough to carry me

into another season.