Dehiscence

I learn today, if tampered upon, some maize strains can reach

forty feet, and I wonder if corn that tall could retake me

to my six-year-old frame, where from my broken window, i’d nearly

hear the wind dehisce a single tassel, wrest seed from shell, slump

stalk obeisant while its neighbor’s silken fingers grasped

pollen, each nascent kernel waiting, bated breath, the way

i hold my own, no longer interloping the rolling green, stamped

right to the soil itself, mud caking my best shoes as i tramp

after neighbor alex’s cat, which darted between table legs & chairs

& us, through screen door to slinking shadows of sun tangled

in whorling sprouts & husks, and we without a second thought

chose nothing but to follow. now we’re lost, alex’s voice echoing

so like her momma’s when she calls us in for dinner, so unlike

the day she told me she didn’t have a daddy. our panting

paints our wake with fog that floats above tousled tips

flowering long after dusk tucks me crisp in sheets & linen

dreams where i sprint the fields again, this time fast enough

to break into flight, and i wonder who quilted the land

mechanical, patches manmade, instead of wild webs of spritely

bugs & mice, and even rats of which my parents warned

but who i’ve yet to see, until I look up

dehiscence in the dictionary 17 years later

— (in plants) the split-

ting at maturity

along a built-in line

of weakness in order

to release its contents, sometimes

involving the complete

detachment of a part —

it makes sense like running, when I’m not supposed to be

in the neighbors’ kitchen, into alex’s stumbling dad

and i’m maybe seven, reeling from humid slurred-

rodent breath that backs me out a house i can

leave, and i’ve no words to name him, only

yes/no, the adults’ tired game, twenty

questions, did he touch you —

we don’t want you

being there

again, but

before

that now

we’re in a field

without our parents’

blessing, and alex grabs my hand to stop me in crowded cricket

descant & coming sanguine moon, says, i feel safe, and I don’t

know but i do know, and she drags me headlong, plummets

arteries occidental of Ohio’s murmured, beaten heart

where we & blooded roots entwine our claws to play.