KS Culbreth

I Stumbled Upon a Rose in the Hay

I stumbled upon a rose in the hay
and thought at first
the field was burning,
then thanked heaven it was at last.
‘Can you keep a secret?’ I asked,
standing behind you holding
your shoulders to prevent you turning
toward me when you tried.
‘I can barely resist you.’
Amid the enduring purpose
of the utile fodder,
futilely bland and dried
sustenance of a doomed chattel,
the rose, lone and pendulous
in late afternoon gusts,
over-shaded by the staple
and the timothy, bound, shackled
by a religion worn to a mere sensation,
and suddenly your, What does it matter?
It’s all extra; it doesn’t
change you, really, make you better.
To stumble upon a rose in the
field of hay, no one to confess to save
the promise of a specter,
at some distant sowing
simply no longer real, or
if it is, simply too vacuous.
A rose in the hay and no one
to hold my trembling hands as I held yours
when cold, no one in a tight embrace
to feel the deep thud of my grave heart.
A rose in the hay as two are
ambered as old paper
with this ancient glow
gone to seed
in a field abandoned.