fallow

for years the word was lazy // first in their mouths // then in mine.

i was a field that wouldn't keep its rows -- the seed went down where it liked.

one corner of me ablaze with colour all summer while the rest went to grass.

other days it was the weight: ground gone soft under any load,

press here and it gives // and look -- nothing to point to // no fence down.

i looked fine from the road. that was the worst of it.

so they kept an account of me. all i was meant to have made by now.

improvement // that was their word for putting the field to rent,

for saying a life that turned no profit was the same as a life not lived.

then someone told me, late // fallow is not the same as waste.

it is the field at rest, loud with what no one sowed.

i had ploughed it for years -- ground that only needed to lie.

the answer came like a map redrawn, the old line lifted from where it cut through me.

it gives me none of those years back // only lifts a debt i never owed,

and says the ground was always ground -- not waste // not rent // not theirs to name,

and there are so many of us // the called-idle // the slow // the ones gone soft under load,

a whole common of us, looking fine from the road, holding what we can

the way ground holds after rain - not for the rent // not for the ledger // for all that grows without their leave.