Mustard: On Turning 55
Mornings like this, when
the sky vacuums
the back of my neck
and the hills
keep their secrets so smugly,
I think the wind is trying
to set me straight.
And here I am
ducking behind mustard—head-high,
then some—like I can hide from God
or a bum knee.
To look up
is to peek through a galaxy
shape-shifting too fast to connect the dots.
It’s the kind of breezy dawn
a Bell’s sparrow can ring in
just by holding on
to a bend of yellow.
What has the morning awakened?
My mouthful of years.
Nose-down, the dog disappears
then turns up anointed,
black back petal-spangled.
I’ve walked with three dogs on this hill
and scattered the ashes of two.
My lines fail
me,
the sky suddenly too bright.
I am out of season,
a husk among husks.
Where are we going with us?
my daughter asked, at two.
To see the lupine’s many mouths, I said.
Here is hummingbird sage, the bruised trumpets
of morning glory.
Now she is off
learning the things
I was not brave enough to tell her.
There are days we live
as if death were everywhere.
Where are we going with us?
Down this path worn smooth
by our ten thousand steps,
around this hill we have circled for years,
like leashed pilgrims,
until just now, slipping suddenly
into yellow.
Craig van Rooyen is a poet and judge who lives on California’s Central Coast. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Best New Poets, Narrative, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize and was recently shortlisted for The Moth Poetry Prize.
Read two poems by Craig van Rooyen previously published in Terrain.org.
Header photo by Tatiana Bobkova, courtesy Shutterstock.
