Children of the Corn
CLARITY: TRANSITION ELEMENTS | Moment One Hundred Forty-Seven
Our new home
was a little farmhouse
surrounded by cornfields
—a playground
for a wild imagination like mine.
Rows upon endless rows
of corn stalks
twice my height.
To navigate,
I’d remember landmarks,
patterns, sequences.
Two stalks missing? Turn left for north.
A sparkling white rock? Turn right for south.
Keep hands up when running
or suffer the pain
of a thousand papercuts.
Two round sandstones, five steps,
a dead crow,
and a double-wide clearing
meant go diagonally left
to a corner clearing,
look for birch trees overhead,
step through three rows,
and venture into the woods.
We ran races through the cornfields! Great memories, and yes, arms up so the corn didn’t smack your face!