Dear  
    New,

daughter
number one,
an intuition can be
the hardest part of per-
ception to receive, laced as it is
with latent prophecy, if prophecy
is the proper term, or love, either's
meaning as loose as November rain,
so when I walk the coils and conduits
of a mat that once was swaying stems
and leavings of liquid green in late July
and now is straw, dead and hempen dry,
I sense a further field, not of stratagems,
as a tooth-nerve-jolt from ten years back
fires its ghost-ganglia-hits down memory
to the original jaw-widening throes below
a present tinfoil voltage—in this way I see
in a noisy rush a stand of rye in Michigan
collapse into a mass of conduits like these
before it doubled itself in yield and growth
that very spring (for rye must die to yield),
as now with steady steps on straw I know
that this grain, too, will root and resurrect,
sway with liquid green, and at that I know
that you will rise beyond your present want
of self-defense toward heaven's blue decree
like grain, and any hurt or work of the world
that tended not cheer you on—or so I thought
you thought, way back when—finally will unfurl
and set you springing free as an athlete who exerts
a league of greater will to leap the everyday, a boxer of the
quality of Ali, in early training, skipping rope—a similar noisy ease.
That is my word on this and how I picture your ringing green release,
    DEAR
YOU.