"This Field and Everything in It" by Wesley Scott McMasters
 

one year to the day

            after my grandfather died

            is easter sunday

 

            my father asks me to walk with him

            through the woods to look for morels

 

            he tells me that they grow in old orchards

            or vineyards

            sometimes beside the decaying body of an old apple tree

 

            this orchard is small

            next to the foundation of a farm

            abandoned after a world war

 

            this orchard is our dome on this sabbath

                       

                        and I haven’t kept the sabbath going to church in quite some time

 

            my grandfather would keep his sabbath on saturday and sunday

                        as he thought Christ would want it

           

            my father and I wade through brush

                        and bramble

                       

            a vine reaches and chokes the life from the tree next to it

                       

the vine bears no fruit

 

            and blood begins to run down my legs

                        like the blood of Christ

                                    waiting to rise

           

            crowns of brambles and thorns around my ankles and my shins

                        with my grandfather’s blood

                        my own

                        soaking into the ground

                        of the orchard

 

            we leave without a harvest

 

                        but maybe next year

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