From my bedroom window, I can see stretches of corn fields and walking on the paths alongside these fields, I can always hear the corn fields whispering.  These whispers sound so private and yet because the sound fills the air, they also seem meant for everyone who is there to listen.

That particular night, which was cool and quiet, leaning on the windowsill, with the yellow moon picking up the gold of the corn, took me back to when I was a girl, helping with the harvest, remembering how those thin golden spears prickled when they came into contact with skin. There was an enchantment there then and it’s still there now.

As I stood there, I thought of cornfields and other fields of grain growing all over the world and it seemed to me that these fields with their precious harvests were as involved with the world as we are.  If that was the case, then, for the first time, I knew that the corn was whispering its love and hope and concern for the world, exactly as we do ourselves.

      THE CORNFIELDS AT PRAYER

So the long cool night begins
And through the quiet darkness
I thought I heard the corn stalks talk
Of all the whispered night-time prayers
Drifting over the fields,
Setting the corn to its own prayer whispering.

Then I heard the corn stalks talk
Of all the little living prayers.
The lovely hares leaping
And the small creatures seeking
The bread of life in the earth beneath them,
And quiet lovers walking the poppied grasses,
Breathing promises and prayers
Into the listening darkness.

I know I heard the corn stalks talk
Of the old traditions of hay-making and stooking,
Of sowing and reaping,
Of the laughter of bare armed innocents driven 
to distraction
By those thin shining spears prickling and stippling,
Until they almost longed to leave
The praying cornfields whispering.

I expect, though, that the corn stalks talk
Of different things
On the bleak plains of grief, for instance,
Or on the long shades of despair,
Taking for their own the bone bare prayer
Of the suffering heart bleeding into the suffering air.
All is loss and lamentation,
Until they sing of a strong and eternal love
That is forever sowing and forever reaping
Love at the beginning and love at the ending.
So the prayers of the world are heard
In the whispering cornfields prayer.

© 2018 Gwen Grant