Plume
The old wheelbarrow aimed like a cannon
at the empty field, its bowed sides gold with rust,
half-filled with last night’s rain, a silver scrim
that shimmers when the wind passes over it,
then moves on into the field, turning the wheat
to waves before it escapes into the trees.
And then the sound of wind through leaves
like time’s low treble note, like the sticky substance
of the day abandoned, the minutes swept up
and dropped, arbitrary, all along the forest floor.
And somewhere beyond the field, a poet sits
alone in her flimsy house, her pen squeaking
across a blank page, writing the screed
of her life, making her little path of words
and thoughts– the candle flame, beer froth,
the field of wheat, the rust, the sun–
writing down everything that doesn’t last.
