The Man in the Field

Is wearing a black and white checked sweatshirt
A wide brimmed white hat, gloves.
He walks behind the slow-moving tractor as it tills.
He watches the seedlings.
The sun on the top of his round white hat is a plate of light.
His face underneath shaded
Obscured and unreadable.
The crystal beads of my necklace click manically
Against the laminate of my ID badge
As I power walk into the cool brick building.
Late, late, late.
I’ve been having a hard time getting up recently.
The kids will stare at the beads and ask, are those real diamonds?
I could tell them yes and they’d believe it, eyes popping.
I want to be outside in the sun, in the moving air
Neck dusty, listening to the chuckle of birds
Not breathing in the still tombed dust of a classroom.
The man in the field looks up at me, looking at him.
Does he want to be wearing a plastic necklace
Walking quickly into a series of cold little rooms
Made of rectangles of dried clay
Thinking he is telling children the right things to believe?
No. Of course neither one of us really wants
What the other has.
I don’t need to see his face to know what we both want
Is only to be as the seedlings at his feet.
Effortlessly growing into their proper shapes.
Stems into stalks, buds into flowers.
There is no plant that says
This is not who I was supposed to be
This is not the life I was supposed to lead
The man looks back down and the sun is brilliant on the top of his hat.
The plates of light are above us.
The plates of light rest on our heads.
We carry them and we get tired of carrying them
Because it feels like we are carrying them for someone else.
For someone else to eat.
So someone else can shine.

Diana K. Malek is a teacher and tutor who lives in rural CT with her husband and dog. Her recent work can be found in Poetry Potion, 8 Poems, and Ligeia Magazine.