Across
by Michael Catherwood

    that field in Kansas, I watched a barn
    fall in, the flames digging up
    from the ground.
    ___________Now I hear fire
    walk in at night across dark heaps
    of books and tables and chairs.

    I smell the watery stare,
    hear the yellow lick the floor slats like frosting,
    dream myself back
    into that field, that junkyard
    of grass in Kansas as real as blue sky.
    I dream I crossed with my cousin through ravines,
    through Chevys and Hudsons.

    Back at Danny's house
    our fathers took baseball bats,
    ____________________knocked golf balls
    into that screaming charmed field of flame and color.






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