BURNT UMBER

Burnt Umber

All the way to the horizon
umber fields unrolling.
Ribbed, stubbled,

dark but for patches in the hollows
where snow persists.
Mid-field, brown lumps

shift, seem to breathe,
resolve into geese.
You feel it would take you

days to walk to where they are
and this makes you yearn
to be there this instant

though last summer
before the grain was fully ripe
you’d have given everything, almost,

to be nowhere at all.

Image by Juan Carlos Rodrigues / freeimages.com

SUSAN GILLIS