Wheat

Wheat


1.
Three boys climb
The wheat silo;

Two of us
Wait below.

Rung by rung,
The climbers rise

Toward the top.
We strain our eyes

To see, but our
Friends disappear.

We wait and wonder.
But then I hear

The oddest sound.
A soft whistle.

And then I know:
One of them is pissing

From the top.
I run, hoping

To escape, but
Troy, with open

Mouth, stares up
And gets a face

Full of yellow.
Soaked, enraged,

He curses
The humid sky

But I remain
Amused and dry.


2.
Drunk and horny,
My girl and I exit
A hight school party
To have sex in

The wheat. It's noon.
I see my girl nude
In the daylight
For the first time.

And I am pleased
To see that her skin--
Her breasts and belly--
Are just as golden

As the summer wheat.
Later my girl and I grew
Apart, but I knew
Her once as she knew me,

Young and tall and uncruel,
And yes, so bountiful.

3.
We weren't vandals,

But we didn't stop
When the local cops

Flashed their lights
Into our teenage eyes.

Panicked, the three
Of us dashed into the wheat.

Suddenly, unbored,
The cops were more

Than happy to chase us

Through the small town dark.
Doug and Karl were smart:

They ran around the fence,
But I, being slow and dense,

Sprinted into the barbed wire.
Ah shit! My chest was on fire!

And I thudded to the dirt.
Bloody, but mostly unhurt,

I remain hidden, uncaptured,
And heard the cop's laughter

As they carried away my friends.

Concealed
In that wheat field,

I waited until the cops were gone,
Then ran and made it home by dawn.

4.
Here is a photograph
Of my neighbor's wheat field.

It's just one of my backyards.
As a child, I was surrounded

By wheat fields. Isolated,
I often felt small and rhymeless,

But I was free to roam,
With all of my neighbors' blessing,

In any of their fields.
In this way, step by step, row by row,

I learned how to escape.


Sherman Alexie

from his book FACE.