The Field (a Missive with Bluff Checks)
“You can’t write home from the field.” Vera Atkins, SOE intelligence officer
Dear friend, I love more cautiously than I would like. If we still had recess—do you remember how the pines dropped sap in our hair?—it would be easier to return after vanishing. But sometimes I want my silence to be seen through. Or I assume everyone detects what terrifies me—this sweeping light, this swaying bridge on which I am forever earning my stillness. You counsel action, you list contacts. Elsewhere a hawk circles and I have always been wary as anything in the field. Between forests, I dart and creature through the months—traversing a world that codes poems as errors. When I report uncertainty, I’m not asking to be found, but testing a theory of grace, counting aloud.
Ceridwen Hall is a poet, essayist, and educator from Ohio. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is the author of three chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press), fields drawn from subtle arrows (GreenTower Press) and Excursions (Train Wreck Press). Her full-length collection, Acoustic Shadows, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, Craft, and other journals. For additional information, visit her website: www.ceridwenhall.com.
