The fields I. Every day, we wake into the same dust, the same bread crust, the same little cough in the throat— and yet the hours push, and we obey. The street is wet. A pigeon, neck shimmering green, pecks at a cigarette filter. Meaningless, all of it, but how beautiful— the curve of its wings when it startles. I walk past the butcher shop, the open sewer, the newspaper stand full of dying headlines. They mean nothing. But the stray dog curled in the corner— its chest rising, falling— this is everything. II. Beyond the town, the meadows breathe in fog. Cows stand, motionless, chewing their circles of eternity. Their eyes are black wells— bottomless, calm. The grass bends and straightens, bends and straightens, without reason. Time itself is just this: slow mouths, green silence, wind brushing over fur. I sit down in the weeds and feel nothing— which is to say, I feel alive. III. We survive because the air insists. We eat because the body refuses not to. There is no reason, only continuation. The ants know this, the sparrows know this, the moss on a fencepost knows this. And the cows too— patient in their endless chewing, not asking, not searching, simply living. a lesson too simple for us to learn. Every life, a wound against silence. Every wound, a small flower opening in the ruins of necessity. And so I walk. The day will be empty. The day will be full. The same thing. The Shameless poems
