THE STEGER Prize For Poetry
The Cornfield
by Jonathan Pillow
His voice was that of a tank crossing a distance cornfield.
Low and steady, almost mechanical, but you knew there was a human driving.
He said, “You know you don’t have to go to college.”
His eyes, flickering wheat brown, tell of experience and knowledge.
The wood planks on his porch scream under the weight of his rocking chair,
and I nod.
”There’s plenty of honest ways for a man to live.
You don’t have to ride the back of some diploma.”
I imagine riding it as a paper airplane, soaring through life.
But each image comes and goes a little too fast, I blink and three years have passed.
It seems like the momentum of the plane can only be slowed for a glimpse
before it is gone again, and all through this I’m getting tired.
City blocks and power lunches carousel around me until they lose focus
but even as my imagination nosedives through 8 dollar daiquiris and one night stands
I am sitting on the porch with him.
Together we look out into fields of hay
and breath deeply the first crisp moments of a summer evening.
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