I had one thing on my mind. God was said to cross
a mustard field and I planted my dress in his tracks.

Bees were crawling like cysts from the too-yellow
flowers, talking their trash where my legs worked

their nakedness into the ground. Fistful of hair I tore
from my head and buried it too. A congregation of ants

performed rites at my ankle. Failed Brutes I knighted
them with the head of my trowel, and like this they died

as I sweated into the dirt. I heard the bees call me obscene.
The sky, however big, a brute too. The light left the dirt

left my skin left the flowers the bees until we all looked
more or less interchangeable. I took a mouthful of soil.

I called this washing the field in myself, wading
backwards into pilgrim’s feet. I plant them for a thief.