Rumpelstiltskin

by Isabel Chenot 

Field after field fluttering up along the road,
a metamorphosis lay on this land
when the long grasses turned to gold.

Their shining wisps and ends,
their tiny, shaken diadems of tatter showed
the slenderness of matter and of wind,
and of light on the mountain.

But I saw in the burning density each wire
as if it were a radiant, fragile bone
forming a changeful, tangled skeleton of fire.

I saw each shining seed as if it were a larval sun
suspended on a fiber till the earth is gone
because the husks have broken.