Harvest
On my way yesterday, the fields were golden in the just-dawning sun,
the stalks high enough I could not see past them
I had meant to take a picture every day for weeks, but I moved past
too quickly, fast enough to beat traffic, faster than my intentions
By the time I returned in the afternoon, the smell of diesel
warned me that something had changed
What waved in the morning wind laid flat, the ground
tamped down, husks piled in the back of trucks: evidence I had missed it
All I had accomplished during the day, the running around,
just barely making it, the pieces jammed into place–I am embarrassed by it now
The hubris.To know that in the fields, they call it the beginning of the breakdown
what was I doing all that time if I wasn’t witnessing the unfolding?
Now on one side, the trucks expectant for someone to drive them
away, or for someone to notice them. On the other side, progress:
the ground rolled up into new shapes, bales perfectly round,
dotting the plain. They remind me of paintings I once loved.
Thu Anh Nguyen is a Vietnamese American poet whose poetry has been featured in the Southern Humanities Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Cider Press Review, Curator Magazine, Zoetic Press’ Heathentide Orphans, The BIPOC Issue of Wingless Dreamer, NPR’s “Social Distance” poem for the community, The Salt River Review, and 3Elements. Her poem “Symbols Are Not Excuses” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and the Best of the Net by the Southern Humanities Review. The author’s poems were also named as a semi-finalist for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize for the Southern Humanities Review. She was honored with a writing residency with The Inner Loop Poetry Series in Washington, D.C. Her most recent book review and personal essay was published by Soapberry Review.