An autumn field abandoned for the season
is twisted and quickly overgrown
with tall grass, which pushes aside the plants
that flourished there, feeding hundreds who came
to the broken brown vegetable cart of the old man
with the flopping tan hat who has stood in that spot
of the marketplace for the past 40 years, offering
"Corn, 50¢."

                   This field on a mountainside
laid over by the first snow of winter, then another,
and more, until the whiteness creeps up to the windows of
the old farmer's grey cabin, is the body of a woman.

She is the land tumbling down below, the brittle
and sharp straw poking out from the waves of snow
that catches the clothes of sledding children,
breaking a few threads, scratching their red faces.