The center of the field
is the point below
the highest crest
in the winter cloud cover.
The point of the field
is to believe it goes on
forever without us.
From this perspective
the whole sky is swooning,
and nothing grows
but the dark of dusk.

I’m on my tractor
turning compost
in the wooden bin,
at its own center
between the barn
and the barren garden.
I’m moving just to keep
warm before the new year
smothers the old
in a frigid wind
that smells like my sweat.
My hands, clutched
on the wheel, ache,
and a damp scarf
over my nose because
you tied the knot
tight behind my neck.

One of the goats
I care for like our child
is crossing the field slow
in her silky white coat.
From this distance
she looks like the absence
of the tall dead grass,
a cigarette burn
in filmstock, a synapse
of snow. She looks
after herself, now
able to find her way
back to the barn
without a lead
around her neck,
she cries and bleats
even when there’s no one
there to listen.

Finished, I park
by a pine stump and glance
back to the house,
where you watch
from the porch window
inside, warm. We are
moving further away
from the summer
of little rain, slim harvest
of corn and broccoli
browning on the stalk,
the past a reel
unwound, still spinning.

Next year, we plan
to move the boundaries
of the field, to make
room for pumpkins,
watermelon and squash,
though what we call
boundaries are arbitrary
as tilled earth.
Will the center
remain the same?

I want to get out
of this cold, to you
and the fire that’s been
burning since before
the kindling set,
dinner the stone
of potato in a bowl,
breath no longer visible
in the air before me.

But there are chores—
brush to pile, animals
that must eat, many eggs
to gather—and always
plans to make for
tomorrow and the next
after that. I can’t wait
to make them with you.
The field remains
unresolved before me
below the overcast sky,
but I keep moving closer,
from ordained beginning
to imagined end,
across the space we are
making between.

—Timothy Geiger

< BACK | NEXT >

TABLE OF CONTENTS