Art by Fons Heijnsbroek
What the Hawk Refuses to Carry
David Anson Lee
The fields have gone quiet:
corn reduced to stubble,
black ribs of earth showing through.
You asked to be placed here,
where wind knows your habits,
where rain arrives honest
or not at all.
I walk the rows
with my hands in my pockets,
listening for what you once said
about stillness:
how it isn’t empty
if you stay.
Above me, a hawk circles:
once, twice–
dives toward nothing I can see
and rises without it.
The field holds its breath.
Loss stretches the way land does:
no edge, no instruction.
Some mornings, fog pools low
between the rows,
and for a moment the farm lifts:
barns loosening from gravity,
fences forgetting their lines;
as if the dead were not gone
but practicing distance,
and love–
that stubborn thing–
were learning
how not to fall.
David Anson Lee
The fields have gone quiet:
corn reduced to stubble,
black ribs of earth showing through.
You asked to be placed here,
where wind knows your habits,
where rain arrives honest
or not at all.
I walk the rows
with my hands in my pockets,
listening for what you once said
about stillness:
how it isn’t empty
if you stay.
Above me, a hawk circles:
once, twice–
dives toward nothing I can see
and rises without it.
The field holds its breath.
Loss stretches the way land does:
no edge, no instruction.
Some mornings, fog pools low
between the rows,
and for a moment the farm lifts:
barns loosening from gravity,
fences forgetting their lines;
as if the dead were not gone
but practicing distance,
and love–
that stubborn thing–
were learning
how not to fall.