I am learning how to hold grief
in my mouth. Something alive
until it isn't. Like a field is a field
until it isn't, until it is just the color green.
Listen when I tell you how a field
folds into a clover when I am on my hands,
how the memory of what I am looking
for is not as important as the ground
it claims. I don't mean that grief
can be unalive. Or that I keep it loaded
in that place between lower lip
and teeth. I mean I never walked the land
where my father harvested seeds.
In his field, he waited for green
to bend into gold. A single blade
splitting light until there was nothing else.
My father remembers. I watch my shadow.
