I have mis-carried three babies in a field of wheat,
laboring hope from my hollowed self: coleoptiles,
those budding leaves and lives in protective sheathes.
What nodes and joints should have formed my stem?
What bone should have grown from such unsettled beat?
Like awns on florets, their tiny cries should have
sighed kernels, should have flowered from the middle
of spikelets. Anthers poked out of my emptiness,
heads emerging in a swollen harvest.

I might have held these seedlings in the palms
of my hands, removed their chaff-like sacs,
then gently blown them clean. Instead, waiting
for the wind, I’ve placed their formless halves
in a basket of earth and exposed them on the banks
of my life, giving back, again, all that was mine.