Men are plowing the fields,leaving a bit of themselves behind each pass.It begins with a letter, then another,an entire name: first and family.Then beliefs dampen the soil,one god or another,a mirror-mangled faceslides from bone.
The self no longer containedin an album in the mindas it rises alongside wheat,soon to belong to everyone.
By the time their sons learn the meaning of sunset,only father’s hands remain,and the plow and the field.
It is already night in the fieldwhere we go to forgetwho we areand work toward rememberingthe extent of what we pass on.
Image: © Raimond Spekking / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
About the writer
John Sibley Williams. John Sibley Williams is the author of Controlled Hallucinations (FutureCycle Press, 2013) and six poetry chapbooks. He is the winner of the HEART Poetry Award, and finalist for the Pushcart, Rumi, and The Pinch Poetry Prizes. John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review, co-director of the Walt Whitman 150 project, and Marketing Director of Inkwater Press. A few previous publishing credits include: Third Coast, Nimrod International Journal, Inkwell, Cider Press Review, Bryant Literary Review, Cream City Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Evansville Review, RHINO, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
