There is a chorus of corn,
blue and thought of
only on bad days
when the neighbor’s techno is playing too loudly.

This is why I am laying
by the little pond covered in algae foam
trying to render a deft little poem

twelve dark lines about the precise moment
I turned into this god-awful, impulsive, cute, bastard

verse trying to prove to my farmer father,
that I can deliver.

I can come through
I can be
what he needs me to be
when he needs me.

He doesn’t believe that.

He is collecting bushels of long ears of corn.
He is glancing at me.
He is glancing at the foam on the pond.
He is kicking the root of the old oak tree where the swing was
that he pushed me on
when i was small.

He is unaware that i am pondering the word “oxidize”
as it relates to me
and him.

Later that evening, I tell him,
“The corn’s delicious Pa”

He rolls his eyes
and heads out to the porch to drink his lemonade
and look at the cornflowers
growing blue.