Napo 11

 Working with an interesting "what if" this morning, inspired by Mark Wunderlich's poem "The Corn Baby." What if it were that easy, to just go out into the corn field and pull a baby from the stalk? How different life would be!

If Babies Started Growing as Readily as Ears of Corn

 

 

If only it were as easy as growing a field of corn

In these open Nebraska fields: the earth in spring,

 

The body with its rows, the stalks erect like gooseflesh

As last of winter’s wind blows through. What if these stalks

 

Started carrying more than corn? Felt the first fluttering

Of flesh deep in the buds, could carry this burden for us,

 

Through the heat of summer, soaking up the sun?

What if it were as easy as walking out into a field

 

in the stubble of September, to touch the silken tops

like a newborn’s hair against the palm, the scent of earth

 

arising as the morning dew becomes mist?

What if birth was as easy as harvesting—

 

sheaf bundled together and tucked into a bassinet,

arms full of golden joy at last? How rich we’d be,

 

you and I and all the farmers with a harvest

more precious than gold, peeling back the husk

 

to kiss that golden ear, one and another and a million,

as plentiful as grain. The earth, at the end

 

of another season of giving, slips on gown of frost

and settles in for months and months of sleep.