Last summer

For Oakley


Remembering what you said
I took the last remaining ear of sweet corn
From the dry cackling stalk
And sat down watching the bittersweet turn color
“we eat them right in the field,
never cook ‘em, way, way best that way”
you told me, the son teaching the father

after your last summer working the corn field
off Scuttle Hole Road
this temporal contiguity, not the least lost in this fleeing moment
nor the sun and cool rain in the kernels
no longer knowing if I am here
remembering you
or you are there remembering me