I had already swallowed
the stories of my sister,
coughing on fear
of danger in those beans.
We were innocents,
running through the cornfields,
laughing as the bent leaves
slapped soft into our faces
until we reached the end—
those soybeans.
I held my brother back
from the waves.
“You could drown
in that green sea,”
I warned, as
she had cautioned me.
We stared into the vacant eyes
of a fallen doe,
who must not have been told
and now seemed to bob
with the choppy prairie winds.
Our first brush with death,
I just stood:
eyes locked,
my feet planted,
an arm around my little brother,
who cried
on that cornstalk shore.
[First published in Chaparral Poetry Forum, 2007]
Copyright 2007 by the Tipton Poetry Journal.
All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual poet and may not be used without their permission.