Dear Field

by AIDAN FORSTER

Before barn

            there was silo:

I learned to work for my space.

            I pulled rain and song

from the earth and ate them

            whole and uncooked,

a small harvest I loved

            until the birds returned.

My grandfather taught me

            that grass was a boy

in a prairie dress. My mother

            handed me a portrait

of a girl dressed in farm tools,

            rain and its blue afterimage.

Together we built the barn and cried

            when the wood ran out.

Together we were antidotes

            of feather and root:

taken best with the sea

            which we dreamed of

but had never seen. In the end

            we slunk into the forest

to sleep. In the end my body

            was a place I visited

but did not belong to:

            a bright green clearing

with a boy in its center, unable

           to touch his own skin.