White Fields

By L.A. Steel

There are no sanctions in life;

Each thought or action is balanced.

Each day brings night,

Each wrong brings right.

To the right of darkness is light.

Rolling and level fields of white

Stretch before the wonderers of life.

Every knoll has a vale;

Every depth has a height.

There may be fences or covered rocks,

Mole holes, or a tree here and there.

The fields lie flat as white mats

Or carpets of dazzling colors,

Images and holograms of attentive life

Darting in and out of sight.

An angel may wing by as a swift

Blast of wind, or tread lightly nearby

Embodied in the coat of a deer—

A message of memory

In a frozen fallen leaf

Whirling at play near your feet.

A dancing thought on the white field

Of nearly forgotten time,

A time known to a single mind.

White fields of winter

Crusted over by ice, wind and snow

Melted by harsh rays of sun or broken by

Footsteps leading on, on to the forest

Or into the horizon, on to a destination

Known only to one.

White fields of melancholy places

As blank expressions on white faces,

A blank stare at the world where

Color dots the landscape creating beauty

To evoke complex passions.

There are white fields that remain not trodden,

Harbored by the green borders of golf courses

And cultured forests.

Here there are snowballs and snowmen

And an occasional white stallion, running on white ground,

Within the boundaries of white corral fences,

In white sounding towns. Towns of milk

And money, snow white people with Christian virtues,

Snowy hallucinations and discomforts of

Frozen noses and cracked lips, chapped

By the blistering boredom of dreary days

Of blinding white. They read sun-blinded blurbs on

Newsprint, snowy computer and television

Screens that cause infectious white diseases of

Eye strain and migraines cured by aspirin,

Alcohol, Prozac or cocaine.

White fields sometimes turn to yellow

And sometimes melt away from fevered

Heat, but in the arctic and antarctic circles

And rural plains of snow and ice,

White fields remain forever white.

Though global warming may melt

Away layers of ancient ice caps and

Expose a colored history,

White fields will remain white

Until the rains of change bring great

Floods to destroy all in anarchy.

Then the muddy colors of mighty rivers

Overflowing their banks

Will forever change the once white landscape.