A boy hiding in a wheatfield, sleep in his eyes.

To him, everything in the field was bleeding,

spiders, the wheat, the moles underground:

black blood and strawblood, some even the color

of his own, his own, his own.

He'll get whipped when he gets home.

He's old enough to predict the future now,

but not to know why the color is draining

from the field -- didn't notice it has been

going on a while, doesn't know things go to

black and white because it's dark, so

he thinks the blood is almost gone . . .

and hears his father's voice calling his name,

in the falling tone he knows means I'm home

or Come in from the yard, not the ascending

that means get down here now, I know

what you've done, and it's the tone,

the flashlight sweeping over the stalk-heads,

the father didn't let brother come searching it's so late,

the descending tone, and suddenly in the chunk of light

he knows he can't anymore tell the future.