Daddy Death

The wheat, radiant rays,
seeming to the sun,
dazzled our eyes.
Out of corners, grasshoppers
dodged, fwipping the air
with their wings.
We laughed
at the dog who led
our passage
through rows of chin high wheat.

Sentinel dog,
jumped so high
to stay the course.

The horizontal landmarks:
tree, fencepost, wire.
The tree to catch the clouds,
the fencepost to nail down the grass,
the wire to conduct electricity.
All to keep us and the cows
in the field.



II.


The tree squatted in the ditch,
cooling its haunches in the silty brown,
from clouds tangled in its branches,
leftovers from the thunderstorm the night before.

Our toes cradled  in the muddy bottom,
water lapping at our belly buttons.
Sentinel dog with lolling tongue,
watching over us.


Later, clothes drying on our sun burnt bodies,
mud caking between our toes,
we'd march militant
in the rows of wheat,
keeping time
with hidden cicadas.


Southward to the border,
field rimmed and wired, grounded
in a metal pole
with porcelain earrings.
A silver strand,
a spider's bite
humming in its veins.

We could straddle,
crawl, 'neath the barb wire,
evade sand burrs, musk thistle, devil's claw.
This.
This wire was forbidden.

"Did Daddy really say?"

"Would it really...?"

"Do we dare...?"


Could death be so easy?
A touch?

Like our ancestors we'd reach to grasp
the silver line,
shimmering in silence...

We felt the bite,
disobeyed our dad.

The sting was not yet death,
but almost death.

Death came not to girls
in Kansas sun.
The disobedience
was a warning for our future.
It only emphasized
the final outcome.

III.
The passage
is in the rings of trees,
the till of soil,
a child's laugh,
a dog's bark.

That ghost of sentinel dog,
vaporized between the stalks of wheat.
Our feet became large and clothed.
The fence corrupt,
corroded.
The disobedience of death in a father's words,
and the obedience of a son
to take the sting
of electric fences
and forbidden touches,
to raise the bodies.
dead in disobedience.