Coming to Rest - COASTAL PLAIN

The only clouds
forming are crow clouds,

the only shade, oaks
bound together in a tangle of oak

limbs that signal the wind
coming, if there is any wind

stroking the flat
fields, the flat

swatch of corn.
Far as anyone's eye can see, corn's

dying under the sky
that sky that repeats itself either as sky

or as water
that won't remain water

for long on this highway: its shimmer
is merely the shimmer

of one more illusion that yields
to our crossing as we ourselves yield

to our lives, to the roots
of our landscape. Pull up the roots

And what do we see but the night
soil of dream, the night

Copyright © 2006 by Kathryn Stripling Byer