FIELDS MIDWEST

April's planting is in the stubble and stunted
stalks march into fields plowed black
for winter's wheat. This calendar's complete
but for an illustration. Ez sez
it's a toothless bitch, a botched civilization.
There's truth in that. But not enough if we know fields.

Remember Vallau where we drank brilliant Napoleon
among the grapes, ignored by the German with binoculars
until he asked if we knew his brother in Minneapolis?
In Bretagne, we hear, they know beets and fish and talk
of prospects while their smoke curls into fog from the bay.

Here a mist blows into ice. Wait.
Soon there will be snow frozen deep enough to hold us all.
Good Christ! we need these fields to survive our years.

-James Ballowe