a field
an opening
sun off power lines
evening bird twitter
a seam a crack
a tick dropped from tree

to be rooted and spreading en place rendering place
to page wound to word and back again wending
over prairie and stream cross country cross line
rending knives dull patterns unbent and trestles fallen                

burning under
coal town
so many trees
so much accumulation
of cars of
brick and sky

to dip toe into river swirling mud creature and sewage
to break contract to bury debt to poke through
bricks on the patio leaf upturned to tendrils
stretching hands stretching words stretching neck to nod

gem girth
swaddle carry
so many fields
so much corn
cattle call
rump roast

to be singing to be not leaving this town for the next
building a library on the corner a grocery downtown
laundering sweaters boiling tea watering tomatoes
cockspur spreading breathing deep and deep

palm sliced
to sky to neck
long arms
tight jeans
tall grass
prairie tree

to hold and to have not shading courtyard measuring
distance to wall to neighbor to fareway to screened
porch roofing stapled to the factory out-river goose
stop and gusset a gentle fabric a tepid embrace

morning wind
train whine
root paste
syllablic swallow
that tremble
this sigh

to want and give insatiable digging barehanded
in wet ground pressing palm to surface soiled dress neck
burnt by mid-day and bone-ache and slow limp lisping
sentences usually left unsaid bodies unanswered and culled

bell toll
dairy cow
tell and fall
the tire roll
the engine rattle
the radiator hum

to extinguish memory for place for hour for legs
summer-sunned to carry back-stitched thoroughly into
cotton french-knotted in the throat
signaling tree-spawn leaf-meal fresh wriggling

gravel path
tree shade
lycra shorts
and construction chug
the coal tower
the silos

to cherry-pick the hours world cup on tv and chattel-call
lining the lunch counter drinking coke cashing
checks envíos passing over the phone on shaded
sidewalks the birds chirp two o’clock the river the watershed

storm warning
leaf rustle
and air hang
the birds
the birds
the birds

to be site to be catalyst to be body rendered field sprawl
actionable or waiting wading into dirty water muddy river
hills washed gulf to earmarked marsh erased neighbors
wooden head of this morning bough-break of this morning
                                                                                   

__

This is part of a larger project thinking about weeds and the feral as modes of refusal, as ways to be ungovernable—and also exploring botanical forms as alternate models for human possibility. I wrote it while a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, NE, and in loose conversation with [Naomi Falk], a visual artist in residence, who was also working on a project about weeds. She installed part of her work [Greener (weeds)] on the patio where I wrote each day.