After the hay is cut a new year comes
and the girl, who sold a dragon
to her brother on the day before last, names
each blade of hay in honor of something
for which she is grateful or to keep a good thing
she has done that day, and come time
to cut the hay (as time keeps coming), the field
will be full of hay people, most with similar
faces and grins, swaying, dancing,
and learning against the indirection
of the wind. A girl in a field says,
Dear hay, I wonder how
your root system works? A hay dragon replies,
In time, though cut, from left-behind roots,
we grow back the same. So name us again,
name us new names or old names,
name us in your always-had counting,
or in your lists of the eclipse of the earth
birthed from your head and set
in the earth around you. Name us,
for in naming, we are made more than hay—
each instrument, each melody, each performance
waiting to be named by you, dear girl
still speaking of hay to hay, still selling a dragon
from years ago, and still asking the question
to the hay boy cutting hay, the question
which makes the field full
even after the match flame
in the dragon’s mouth.