Still Green

A still afternoon at the top of summer. You're standing in a field you tended all season, and it's ready. The heads hang heavy, gold coming up under the green, and some part of you keeps calling it not yet. One question, asked once, for the thing in you that's finished growing and won't be called finished. No answer is handed to you. You come back with what you already had.

Transcript

The day is at its height. Let your eyes close. And let it be somewhere behind them. One of those afternoons when the heat stands still. No wind. No sound. The air, Thick and gold, Going nowhere. You are out in it. The light lies heavy on your shoulders. Your face. The backs of your hands. Warm the way a stone stays warm a long time. After the sun has done its work. Take a breath. And let the warm air come in with it. Let it out slow. Again. And out with no hurry in it. Everything here is still. Not the stillness of nothing happening. The stillness of a thing. That has finished happening. And gone quiet. Let the field come up around you. It stands as high as your waist. Hire in places. Gold, The holes way out to where the land meets the sky. You are standing in the middle of it. You know this field. You watched it the whole season. When it was green and low. And gave no sign of what it would be. You were here for all of it. It grew while you were not looking. And it grew while you were. Look at it now. Heavy. The heads. Out over on their stems. Too heavy to stand straight. The whole field leaning under its own weight. It is as full as it is going to get. The ground under you is dry and cracked. The air smells of dust and dry grass and sun. And there is a sound you can almost hear. The faint dry rustle of a field that has stopped drinking and started to cure. There is one stalk close to you. Just there. Beside you. A single head of green. Bow it over. Heavy on its stem. Let it lean into your open palms. Take its weight without pulling it. It is dry. The husk. On paper in light. The green long out of it. And under that. Feel it. The grain inside gone hard and dense. Run your thumb across it. A few come loose and drop. Without any work at all. They were ready to let go. This is ripe. There's no mistaking it. Once you are holding it. It will not be right here next week. Than it is right now. And still. Some part of you reaches for not yet. Wants to leave it standing. To let it grow a little longer. Get a little more out of it. Before you'd call it done. That voice is old. It has left a lot of fields standing. And it always sounds like care. The field goes quiet. Even the dry rustle stops. One question for this field. Ask it into the quiet. And don't ask it again. What's raping you that you keep calling not ready? The answer doesn't come up by pulling. If it's ready. It comes loose on its own. The way the crane did. Cupid Room. The field doesn't wait for you to decide. What is ready does not keep. Left standing. The head's dry past dry. The stems bend further down. And the grain works itself loose. A little at a time. And goes back into the ground it came up from. Not gathered. Not made into anything. Just return to the dirt quietly. By fall, The field stands empty. That is not a thing to settle now. Is only a thing to know. But a field will do what a field does. In its own time. With or without you. The heat starts to go out of the light. The gold dims behind your eyes. You don't carry the field out with you. It stays there. Happy with itself. Exactly as you found it. You've called it Korean a long time. It hasn't been green in a while. The warmth that was the fields is just your own now. The heat of a body that's been sitting still the whole time. When the gold has gone from behind your eyes. Let them open.