--
the dandelions mature – whiskery and skinny as hobos and
when we walk outside, in the fields, burrs and foxtail heads stick
in our socks and we have to spend an hour afterward picking them out,
deliberate and hooked. we look out into the valley, the wildflowers tiny
and surreptitious, slumbering in their own veils of pollen like children
tucked in, and the great red poppies, swelling and steaming like
teakettles as the afternoon boils down to its last
tealeaves – the guilty clouds arranged in patterns
predicting the future and read as hieroglyphs.
the boy in the field is from the city, his stockings pulled up and
a little panama hat on his head. his mother walks beside him.
we pick the few stingy, yoked apples left in johnson's
field and we watch the pair head toward the pond, her yellow silks and scarves
blowing in tufts around her, as if she was some overladen bee.
her parasol hunts over the hills and the tips of the tallgrass and
the little boy squats and studies the kinesis of the beetles
and the damselflies, ruddering, rowing.
the apples at the bases of the trees are yellow, starchy, with plumbings
of wormholes and our elbows are red and scratched from climbing the old
apple trees. at the pond, where the padded lilies are white as kneecaps
and the little waterbugs steeple and dimple its undisturbed surface, the boy
floats toy boats that waver and the mother sets up an easel and a tray of
broken pastels and paints that she stirs up with fine, flexible brushes
and she watches us with our apples and our freckles,
climbing over johnson's fretful wire fence.
