Fields

by Faith Shearin
For Henry and Irene Spruill

My great grandfather had some fields in North Carolina

and he willed those fields to his sons and his sons

willed them to their sons so there is a two-hundred-year-old

farm house on that land where several generations

of my family fried chicken and laughed and hung

their laundry beneath the trees. There are things you

know when your family has lived close to the earth:

things that make magic seem likely. Dig a hole on the new

of the moon and you will have dirt to throw away

but dig one on the old of the moon and you won't have

enough to fill it back up again: I learned this trick

in the backyard of childhood with my hands. If you know

the way the moon pulls at everything then you can feel

it on the streets of a city where you cannot see the sky.

My mother says the moon is like a man: it changes

its mind every eight days and you plant nothing

until its risen full and high. If you plant corn when

the signs are in the heart you will get black spots

in your grain and if you meet a lover when the

signs are in the feet he will never take you dancing.

When the signs are in the bowels you must not plant

or your seed will rot and if you want to make a baby

you must undress under earth or water. I am the one

in the post office who buys stamps when the signs

are in the air so my mail will learn to fly. I stand in my

front yard, in the suburbs, and wish for luck and

money on the new of the moon when there

are many black nights. I may walk the streets

of this century and make my living in an office

but my blood is old farming blood and my true

self is underground like a potato. At the opera

I will think of rainfall and vines. In my dreams

all my corn may grow short but the ears will be

full. If you kiss my forehead on a dark moon

in March I may disappear—but do not be afraid—

I have taken root in my grandfather's

fields: I am hanging my laundry beneath his trees.

from The Owl Question. © Utah State University Press, 2002.