Interstices and Protuberances

by Kathleen Halme

Corn segues like greening shades of thought,
prepared to shoot abstraction from the sky,
and girls in pink and violet sweats are taught
to pull the drooping silk and so untie
the creamy ears’ alleged concupiscence.
Spilled roots and corn and silk; the boys work near.
One hidden girl stops taking silk. Intense,
she strips the green, each blade, and cups the ear.
Confirmed now, she thumbs the ivory teeth,
and stretching up to meet the torch, she bites,
and tastes her first surprise of milk-white sweet.
This is good, she thinks as she unfolds the rite
and listens for the warming schwa of growing form
she hears inside the rows, the stalks, the corn.