The Wheat Field

From a distant town I’ve come traveling to work along dust and dirt trails at the City on the Mount.

Walls overlooked the countryside, edifices laid before the horizon where the road slipped between the city’s gates into skies and clouds fading into golden hues.

But I paused.

    A dry flood swept across tilled fields,

When had I entered these fertile rows? The field spanned from side to side, down the road, to the far-off hills behind, around the City and its gazing walls.

The ochre flushed as spring pines with the wind yet through my eyes the fields seemed still. I’ve noted fair meadows and rampant corn; this wheat stood twice their height.

I envisioned a waterfall of wheat spilling     over and breaking on the ground below. What remained were standing stalks and scattered seeds abroad.