I followed myself for a long while, deep into the field.
Two heads full of garbage.
Our scope was larger than I realized,
which only made me that much more responsible.
Yellow, yellow, gold, and ocher.
We stopped. We held the field. We stood very still.
Everyone needs a place.
You need it for the moment you need it, then you bless it—
thank you soup, thank you flashlight—
and move on. Who does this? No one.
About this poem:
"My new manuscript includes several long 'landscape' poems that move forward with rhetorical and meditative gestures. I wanted to inhabit these locations in a personal way as well. It didn't work inside the poems—they became muddy and confusing, with conflated speakers and tones. The 'detail' poems offered a way to revisit the landscapes with an inside view, rather than the overview. 'Detail of the Hayfield' is a companion piece to a longer poem, 'Gold Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors.'"
Richard Siken
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