Mr Elijah Freeman, itinerant farmer, 

lay in the field the entire night. 

One pocket of his coat was a Hoover flag, 

the other held a piece of chalk, a child’s bracelet 

and a carefully folded flyer. 

He lay still, warming with the first light, 

a flock of birds rose from the crops 

and the threshers rumbled past, 

wide as a highway.  

In his dream the rains came gently, cool water 

gathered and ran as rivulets, 

careful ploughing left ridges of barn red soil, 

deeper colour in the valleys. Then the showers grew weaker 

and the late sun left a golden skin across the sky; 

the labourers sat and drank from their flasks, 

watching the mist drift away like smoke. 

The stones settled in the creek as the water 

marked its course, the clouds 

turning from pearl to pewter, 

stirring a breeze, warm, incurious. 

Eyes opened, houses as well, 

and in the morning the birds sang 

as if they’d flown from the twelve gates. 

No dust, 

no corn bent horizontal, 

no bitter me  

sitting on their haunches,