This season is called white hair
	—Charles Wright

Corn silk emerges from the husk, moist female hair, 
up to one-thousand strands per ear, opening to
windblown grains of pollen.

This is sex in the cornfield, a cloud of possibility
until the remaining silks grow unreceptive
and we harvest the corn, stripping spent husks
and plucking off the leftover milky strands.

Each season of white hair seeks the wind,
and though my head has not gone gray, I grasp 
my grandmother’s yellowed ivory brush 
and pull its pale boar bristles through my hair 
until I am haloed, filaments flaring out around me
with the static of each stroke.

There is a way home.
It runs through the cornfields beneath the stars,
rises like a river
to wash the apple trees below the barn.
If you are careful you will not disturb the snakes
who curl in the tall weeds
beside the grassy path your feet have known.

Sometimes in the distance
you will see the others,
silhouettes on moonlit hills
carrying hoes over their shoulders,
returning from their fields
even as you go to yours,
sure-footed as a goat
down the stubbled rows toward sleep.

When you climb to the graveyard on the 
hillside, stop among the old ones,
lie down on the earth with your head 
in the shadows the moon throws between 
tombstones and begin to count the stars
in the Milky Way.

You will run out of numbers.
You will run out of words.
You will forget how to talk to the sky.
You will forget where you have come from,
or where you are going.
You will only know that you are light
among the stars,
that cornfields spiral out from you
on every side, shining corn
as far as you can see—
even over the edge of the world,
that dark circle you have found
at last.

Once there were obedient rows prepared
for seeding annuals, and hardy perennials 
dependable as the tilt of the turning planet.

Leaves transparent as dragonfly wings
fluttered in the breeze—dragonflies whose 
compound  eyes refracted summer sun.

Now it’s gone to weed and seed, random 
blossoms dropping petals, pesky volunteers 
daring to poke their varied signatures up 

through crumbling dirt. Sometimes children 
come to play there, remembering faces in the 
hearts of fallen flowers, seeking laughter in the 

harsh caws of crows, or hiding in the tall grasses 
that glitter gold in the slant rays of late afternoon. 
But at night, for those who used to kneel beside 

the flowerbeds, their spades turning fertile soil—
at night the garden blooms again, filling their 
phantom arms with ghost bouquets as they 

pass through one another—translucent spirits
haloed in faint moonlight, their fading faces 
buried in the lingering scents of Earth.