Ergot schlerotta has been identified
in a sample of wheat grown in western
Washington
.—The Seattle Times

You sit in the yard and find
no reason to move. Everything
you need is here. Your eyes and ears
are open fully, enough to see
the rainbow in sunlight on brick.
The sycamore you lean against
is breathing—you hear it drawing
water up its long chain of xylem.
And the sky, the sky is not blue
but forty blues, and toward dusk
a pale green through which bats trace their elaborate letters.
And later, when you return
to milking cows, mending
the split-rail fence, the substantiality
of stable and field, your daily bread,
you will know where you walk
is holy. Something rises from what you plant—
it is in the wheat,
those thousand thin women with their hair
on fire. Listen in the field—
what you hear is not the wind only.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 3 Number 7, on page 42
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