After the chemical yellows of noon, 
a high tide of brightness 
that came as close to blinding us 
as any naked flame might have done, 

these acres become less vulgar 
by degrees. Brassica napus, 
rape, or oilseed rape, most Janus- 
like of all crops, and here less nuclear 

under the cover of clouds. How dark 
in there between those rods. Not ten feet 
in and you might be lost, or soon forget 
who you are among these alien stalks, 

surrounded by heat, standing heat loathe 
to move an inch or two, an oubliette 
where you welter in a vegetal sweat 
of your own making, unable to breathe. 

I would paint those flowers 
en plein air that I might capture 
once and for all their candour 
at noon, and every aspect of the hours 

thereafter – how the field darkens 
under the threat of a summer storm, 
a sunken and storeyed gloom 
as sullen as munition; or at dawn 

how the flowers, drained of colour, 
emerge weakly to presage what later 
they become at dusk – apparitions and paler 
than other ghosts that keep those hours 

having been the brighter in the sun. 
A canvass flush with watercolours, 
and no shade of yellow so secure 
that it might not change by the hour, one 

yellow ceding to the next, a patch of rain 
playing its part with a sudden penny 
or two, until each and every affinity 
has been invoked – the water reflections 

of buttercups, Ranunculus, on the skin; 
or the distant stain of mustard gas; 
or the spiked yellow flowers of the gorse 
that smoulder above a smoking gun 

of shrub beneath; and more. It does not last. 
By mid-June the flowers are all but gone, 
the field like any other neutral zone, 
bar stragglers standing higher than the rest, 

erect, soldiers who shoulder arms 
in the face of defeat. Think better of it, 
nothing has changed in there, no exit, 
only heat embroiled in heat, the same 

inbred stew that looks to detain 
any stickler who lingers too long – a heat 
that sweats it out of you, that beats 
you with its cane, again and again.