…but infinities also passed out of this life,
not having any witnesses, how, when, or in
what manner they departed.
-Boccaccio, The Decameron
I.
Continuation before the event.
Elusive in
its hue.
Gnarled rhizomes (lily)
to protect
against sudden fever
or the body's response
after exposure
(as the outer, gaseous layers
of a star's core erode in death.)
More lilies
and baths of lavender to bring reprieve-
incarnate-
Nature will send
such poison
far from the noble organs…
The moon changed positions slightly
in the night
but to no great extent.
The plough failed to cut
the field.
II.
Sometimes they lived and sometimes
they died, the one or the other,
the earth taking them after the unlawful
hiding, the illicit care
when stricken, or abandoned.
An accident of pain of the body…
A refusal indistinguishable from salt.
Salt of refusal
to constitute a precedence of the physical, outside-
in the hammer, the lathe, in the loom-
which revelation could not destroy.
To hide inside the visible…
within an opacity, at noon.
Occasionally an oscillation
of movement in a passageway, courtyard, window.
Or the illegal step out of doors.
Impossible to leave the density
of that light.
The Bean Field
Jocelyn Emerson
(1)
Poem topics: death, life, light, moon, nature, night, noble, pain, star, earth, field, great, bring, destroy, response, movement, hide, revelation, visible, protect, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Bean Field poem by Jocelyn Emerson
Best Poems of Jocelyn Emerson