I WALK IN CORNROW RHYTHM ©

I walk in cornrow rhythm. I set the measured step
for my own one pass through the field.

My limbs have become syncopated
to the reach‑step‑bend‑snap‑pull‑drop
music of the clean pick.

I am the god machine. I harvest the sound
of the cornfield with my own full ear.

My hands dehead the dew‑beaded
hollow stock in one clean snap.
Released, the pithy stalk pops up straight.

I move the field one plant at a time. I work below
the cacophony of blades with my own fast grasp.

I drop the sleeveless tassel
in the suck of the mud; its golden ropes
splay roughly under my bemired feet.

I recreate the funnel of the row with my own
ripe eye. The cornshoots sprout up before my step.

I see the fallow soil reform
into furrows under a cornblade canopy.
The moist wind soughs through a caliope of blades.

I am the transplant in bloom.
My scalp prickles warm with my own hot god.

My feet waddle duck‑mud cold
under the cut of the fistulous rustling.
The pollen traces mark my passage beneath.

I am the scarecrow. I put to flight
the lacuna of the sun with my own full dreams.

My labor has burned an end
to the furrow; I must forsake
the silkiness of a soliloquent morning.

I am first out of the field; I shift my soul
to call back my own sweet smell of the corn.

I am a cornrow pariah. As I splay my spirit
on the berm of the ditch, the wind wifts in
with the crowing of the many of the crew.





Poetry Reading, University of New Mexico
Conference, Winter 1985

Navigating the Platte, Ohio University, Creative Thesis, 1993

The Small Pond Magazine of Literature
VXXVIII, No. 2 (Spring 1991): p. 37.