Andrew Wells

We'd just realized about plowing
our fields under. A satchel     
of feed corn falling tightly.
Was it a minor miracle?
Being next to another? The truth
is adjacent. The cows will cross
the field for it. Reaching,
remnants of the alfalfa
pasture brown to plain
grass. I'll tell you everything.

We don't live with jackdaws
anymore. I think of them
when the crows act like wanting
to want to question the corn
but decide the answer still
has to do with duration, how not
knowing a more accurate way
to talk gives way to jungly
descriptions, the thing you use
to do the other thing.  

Minor and minor, we
with what hangs inside us. It's a crow's
dance here and what'll I say
about it? They keep me awake
all sounding like sliding sack
after box off a shelf in the barn.
It's precise. Rue the moments.
The field is under. The cows go
where they want. Long birds wrestle
willow branches to the river.

We were drunk and read
the Bible. Remember, you
were excited about God
changing minds. Nothing went
without saying. It was a heart-
shape, dog-close. One of us
read if your spirit won't go
with me, don't carry me up
from here, one of us laughed.

Read me the book on Jonah
you said, read me on a man
who doesn't do what he's told
until aswim, a prayer in a fish
belly. There were more freckles
than expected and sweaty tangents.
Take your half in the middle,
I explained. How many cubits
could be kissed in recompense.

Follow the log roads. Build them out of air
and breathe them. The cornstalks are dead.
You were darling in a different shirt.

Pray for a candle for getting the path
figured out. Listen to the buzzards
if they talk. Ask them if they're silent.

Charlie, we spoke last about glass
bottles, a runnel-tide's redolent
discipline. Being the most anyone

ever had. There's a jigsaw to it,
the silver maple being green
then red with little wind and enough

rain. There's a felled sparrow in most
of the sandstone. You never find it
where God put it. There are one

or two ways to rise and come
home with the frost and the fall-glow
you borrowed. I recall a footbridge,

not listening to what anyone tells
about you. Charlie, go back a little.