The Harvest

The sun sinks into itself, deep gold.

Sinking with it, the whole valley—

far hill of gravestones and hedgerows,

houses, paved walks, streetlights, streets.

Out late in late autumn to walk the hills

and blue ridges of shale and thin soil,

I’ve just now come in from the garden.

Sun turns the windows pale amber,

and there’s sun flare in the ridged veins

of my hands as I scrub this yam, scouring

this last of the harvest to an earth-colored shine.

No dirt on the root now, none

in the shallow eyes, none in the nick my shovel

gave it. And now more than the root comes

to rest in my hand, the whole

earth of it rising with

hemlock, black cherry, nurse logs, dense sprays

of arrowy fern, and just where earth meets air,

the clean smell of oil oozing up

on its own—all this

I let rest in my hand, the sun going down blood-red

on what’s left of this oil boom town,

its roustabout and rowdy energy,

its swell of profit and plunder.

Out walking earlier, I heard a deep woods bird,

full-throated, a veery, its doubled notes

descending in eerie harmony

as I walked in the slippage

of light beneath the hinged shadows of trees—

able suddenly to feel these lovely woods

scraped down to a final stump,

the hills gone raw in rain light,

blackened rivers, eroded fields, and god knows

what animals, birds, one species an hour

vanishing. It’s crazy, isn’t it, using the present

tense in a poem, as if

to pretend that what has happened once, just once,

is still unfolding, everlasting.

Ten lines from now, very soon,

this poem will end,

and I won’t know why, my endangered reader,

nor will you. One moment, I’m scrubbing a yam

to bake for supper; in the next,

I see the earth

become a breath for nothing—earth redacted, then erased.

I’m left staring at the root in my hand.

And the page you’re reading now—

it’s blank from here.