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Detail of the Hayfield

I followed myself for a long while, deep into the field.
Two heads full of garbage.

Our scope was larger than I realized,
which only made me that much more responsible.

Yellow, yellow, gold, and ocher.
We stopped. We held the field. We stood very still.

Everyone needs a place.

You need it for the moment you need it, then you bless it—
thank you soup, thank you flashlight—

and move on. Who does this? No one.

Richard Siken is the author of I Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2024); Blue Jupiters (Copper Canyon Press, 2021); War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015); and Crush (Yale University Press, 2006), which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 2004. He lives in Tucson.

Themes

About this Poem

"My new manuscript includes several long 'landscape' poems that move forward with rhetorical and meditative gestures. I wanted to inhabit these locations in a personal way as well. It didn't work inside the poems—they became muddy and confusing, with conflated speakers and tones. The 'detail' poems offered a way to revisit the landscapes with an inside view, rather than the overview. 'Detail of the Hayfield' is a companion piece to a longer poem, 'Gold Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors.'"
—Richard Siken

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Real Estate

My mother married a man who divorced her for money. Phyllis, he would say, If you don’t stop buying jewelry, I will have to divorce you to keep us out of the poorhouse. When he said this, she would stub out a cigarette, mutter something under her breath. Eventually, he was forced to divorce her. Then, he died. Then she did. The man was not my father. My father was buried down the road, in a box his other son selected, the ashes of his third wife in a brass urn that he will hold in the crook of his arm forever.

Richard Siken

2020

Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors

To have a thought, there must be an object—
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

Richard Siken

2014

Detail of the Woods

I looked at all the trees and didn’t know what to do.

A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.

I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.

Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

Richard Siken

2011

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Detail of the Hayfield

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