Nicole Brooks

Becoming a Field

Fingering the tassels topping the cobs,
peeling the husks and palming the stalks,

I make piles of dry silks in this morning
fog. Wind picking up, tossing

the grasses, I hear the dead,
the gone. Scooping silt into my hands

brings me to grandmother,
curled, diapered, bald, somewhere between

me and god. I had taken her hand,
bowed my head to the rented hospital bed, 

combed my hair with her fingers.
In this way a parting. Pop the bubble

at her lips. A quiet falls
in the field’s slope. I’m scattered strands

threaded through this Indiana cornfield,   
listening for her in the rows.

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