Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now

I drove into the city yesterday with a Dad and his three kids. In the back were five chickens which I had helped catch that morning on the farm. We made a stop in a parking lot on the way so that the kids could stretch their legs and have a snack. I watched the chickens in their cat-cages, stuffed in the back trunk of car, remembering their former home in the pasture. All around me were cars and pavement. I saw myself in the chickens, and all the beauty of the land in them, a caged transplant dragged into the concrete city.

The kids wanted some grass after their snack. "Some grass?" said the Dad. Then we remembered that Sean had taught them to be farmers by taking a blade from the field and chewing on its end. But the grass in the parking lot was tough and bitter. "It's because it's not farm grass," they said. "Farm grass is better."

We drove away from the seeds I had sown, from the chicks and the lambs I had watched grow. From the crops that I was terrified of losing when the hail almost drove us off the road. I won't be back for almost three months. The closest I have ever felt to this was when I left a lover behind. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, what a mistake it is to leave.