Wheatfield with Crows

Poem by Brooke Brandtjen with illustration by Tarynn Lassiter.

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Sunlight tears through linen and kisses 

The cracking white skin that hangs on my knuckles

Good evening to carbonated blood

There is glass seeping through rose colored veins

Beyond the fields, a young girl sweeps her

Father’s kitchen floor, and a girl without a mother

Plays the piano for her housekeeper to hear

Those blue freckled notes, those hot tin chords

If only that sweet melody would play for me

These fields saunter and lurk, stumble and

Speak of the black feathered crows whose wings

Are impossible to capture in oil paint.

My glassed flowers will wither and perish

The young girl will trade a broom for tea towels

My legacy lies in the billowing smoke of Paris

(And I refuse to breathe that air in again)

Is this truly all I am to know of hell?

Will the reality be stripped away like rain covered

Bark on a tree? There is green in these hills I did not see

& I clench my fist because it does not belong to me

A terrible liar I always have been, because out in

These wheat fields, out among my sins, all covered in 

Gold, lacy breaths, there is no sign of men

Apart from me. Reminiscent of daggers and 

Falling to your knees on the path to me, me, me.

Eternity’s loving hand strokes this easel so humbly.