Now, at sunset, the children’s
faces part the light
and take on darkened
cloaks, so for a moment, though
prairie wind animates brush
and crests its grasses, while tractors
roar through the fields, causing dust
to hover holy ghost like
over the surface of the shivering deep
loam as controlled burns
singe the invading sunflower edge-weeds
and we protect our cultivated soy crop,
everything is foreshadowed
with reflexive clarity. The old ground
will crumble under cull and engine.
Rise and make a cloudless red
stinging sky. What would it mean to unimagine,
unimagine, no, not being, but desire;
to unimagine desire.
Conduit to dissatisfaction,
my life is what else.