What is exposed when there is a tear in the fabric of things?
-Ken Stewart
Rebel
Although it has been years,
in autumn,
when the sumac firelights the roadsides
filling the air,
not with smoke but with clarity,
I am on the farm again.
I breathe the warm snorting
smell of his blackness, grip
him tight with legs and hands
as we cross the fields
with the speed of geese in flight.
The fields are black, too,
ready for winter to etch
their clods with frost,
stiffening them like Lot’s wife.
But I do not look back,
for I am fifteen and ready.
I match my rhythm to his,
fast walk, trot and then–
In one enormous exhalation–
we are stretching out,
beyond the farm, the fields, the woods,
beyond the highway leading into town.
Into Saturday,
into summer,
into hills and dark mountains,
possibilities coming faster and faster,
my hair streams behind
like a comet’s corona,
two times around the sun,
leaping planets, dodging meteors.
Yes, sometimes in autumn…
-Jean Doolittle