EVENING FALLOW

The field has given everything it has to give
and lies down in it,
the way exhaustion,
when you finally stop resisting,
becomes its own kind of peace.

I stand at its edge
and don't go in.

A fox crosses the far furrow,
each paw placed without consultation,
without the small negotiations
I make with every step.

He doesn't pause at the boundary.
Doesn't need to know
what the field is becoming —
he just moves through what is.

The soil is darker where the plow turned it,
still releasing the day's last warmth,
its smell a compound of endings:
wet root, iron, the faint sweetness
of something already becoming something else.

Beneath all of it, the seeds.
I can't see them but I know —
coiled in their own darkness,
each one a question
that won't be answered until March,
each one more patient
than I have ever managed to be.

The fox is gone.
The field doesn't mark his passing.

The light fails in its usual way,
indifferent to whether I am watching,
unmoved by what I came here
to put down —
and couldn't.

I stay until the cold
makes the decision for me.

Walk back across ground that gives
slightly underfoot —
not yielding, just
acknowledging the weight.

Behind me, the field continues
its long, faithful work of waiting.
It doesn't need my witness.
It never did.

As I turn,
one furrow catches the last light
differently than the others —
a seam of darker earth,
open just enough
to show what's underneath:

not ready,
not waiting,
just — there.

— Jean Kiernan Detjen