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The fields lay in waiting

Fallow, like eggs to be cracked

With a tiny orange spade: a Philip's head beak.

Heat beats wheat stalks over a hill

And under a Roman buttressed bridge

Oscillating, waving, my back says goodbye

Soaked in the lavish heat of June.

I peel it off like cellophane and he says thank you

And wishes to be dipped in cool waters

Those cricks that accompany this road

Through The United States of Central Europe.

My back the Imperialist, so sopped, dressed

Like wheat bread whipped with perspiration.

It opens up to the air, to eat

Tepid and loud.

In route to Weimar, Germany. June 2000.

-M.C.