The 21st Century in Germany

The slow motion
forward, the creeping recognition who comes
sudden as the flood—like falling
out of love—your train has begun to move,
Boundless for Berlin. And in minutes
you've left Leipzig and her
soon to be ancient history
behind, concentrating only on
the white arms of what once were
called windmills, watching them
grasp wildly after something
they never fully reach
but always have.
In this way we are the same,
you and I, with our common language and hatred
of the times when only void flows through,
when the incorrigible heart and her allies
usher us only on
and never to.
But this is not now. Now
we are going back to Berlin, now
our only concern is the singularity of this
village road overpass we rumble across,
our only concern is who here knows
this small corner of being so well as
I know the walkway over US-441
4.3 miles from my childhood
home. Or at least that was
our only concern, before we were hit hard by the inscrutable
yellow brilliance of rapeseed in bloom,
flashing by like a plain of pure sun.
Hand in hand we bend our bodies into birds
and fly through the fields, breaking stems and stamens
as the pollen paints us
Gold.