Mustard in the Napa Mist - John Lennart Roos , 2025.

Dutch-New Zealand , b. 1959 -

Tili gogul

Away In Virginia, I See a Mustard Field and Think of You

because the blue hills are like the shoulders and slopes of your back as you sleep. Often, I slip a hand under your body to anchor myself to this earth. The yellow mustard rises from a waving sea of green.

I think of us driving narrow roads in France, under a tunnel of sycamores, my hair blowing in the hot wind, opera washing out of the radio, loud. We are feeding each other cherries from a white paper sack.

And then we return to everyday life, where we fall into bed exhausted, fall asleep while reading, forget the solid planes of the body in the country of dreams. I miss your underwear, soft from a thousand washings, the socks you still wear from a store out of business thirty years. I love to smell your sweat after mowing grass or hauling wood; I miss the weight on your side of the bed.

Barbara Crooker